Housing Colombo’s poor - Part II

Chartered Architect Prof Harsha Munasinghe
Head, Department of Architecture, University of Moratuwa

Continued from December 14

It is needless to say that certain quarters of the city is perishing today and how this could sorted out in the case of improving the housing conditions of the under-served shall be paid attention.

We know that many scholars have written about waste management through sorting out, reusing, recycling, but our point is how the new housing solutions could integrate these aspects. Among the tools that can be used are land use patterns, planning standards, cluster planning, and use of urban analysis such as ecological footprint. They will benchmark the standards that we shall set for new housing and authorities shall take necessary measure to inform and instruct the designers and builders of the new housing on such benchmarking in order to strengthen this cluster of asset. A strengthened physical environment on the other hand will attract new investors thus resulting in better economic performances.

Infrastructure facilities

The last cluster includes infrastructure facilities and equipment for as energy, transport, water supply, communication, sewerage and waste disposal. This swallows up most of the city’s capital but the city may not gain any revenue by supplying these to the under-served community, which depend on these services. Provision of these facilities will benefit the city indirectly by cutting down on health and maintenance costs, and a proper management of these facilities will benefit the city without any doubt.

If we take roads for example, it is essential for people’s mobility and for the transportation of goods. Since the under-served community is mostly involved with the servicing of the city and since their service is needed in early hours, affordable mobility is an essential asset. This means their resettling should be based on easy mobility. If the roads are designed with sidewalks, pavements, and other necessary features, the accessibility and mobility as well as maintenance of roads would be easier. Other urban assets will have the similar benefits and investing on them will certainly help the growth of the city as a whole.

Permanent slums

Our argument is not to build up these assets within a day or two but to facilitate its strengthening over time. It is a fact that by investing on them will not only result in urban development but also in improving standard of living among the under-served communities. Our focus on this particular community is the current interest among the authorities in salvaging the lands occupied by them in order to improve the city’s strength as a magnet of investment.

The Government has requested professionals to support this endeavour by designing and building of 10,000 houses within the city limits. Since the professionals are under pressure to produce the houses within a rather unrealistic time frame and a budget, we fear that these assets of the city would not be even understood. It is likely that professionals may only produce numbers and not comfortable housing. We as professionals have created more permanent slums in the place of impermanent slums in the past and our fear is that the present day exercise would bring similar results. We have made the under-served communities consider that they cannot escape from those tiny spaces now placed above ground.

In their own impermanent way of making housing, they may have yet had the hope of moving in to a better shelter with the climbing up the social ladder. We have imprisoned them in their current status in the past. Our failure to understand their dream has resulted in giving them houses with attached bathrooms, pantries, utility balconies, refuse chutes, etc which they do not know how to use or how to maintain. The users can be educated to use these facilities but the high costs of maintaining these facilities would re-emphasise the fact that anything more than four floors is not a suitable solution for the housing of economic-weak.

City development

The main reason for high rise solution is salvaging land for market oriented acidities. We must need to move away from city-marketing to a more endogenous strategy that emerges from the place and that is based on developing the said assets. This will support the development of the entire city and its region. Affordable housing, education and mobility will support improvement of living standards and will result in the making of a healthy city. We believe that our real issue in the city is improper land use planning and weak spatial design. In the making of the asset-base city development, what we need is bringing more place-oriented policies to develop the areas occupied by these under-served communities.

Then we could look at some of Colombo’s strengths that we have never tested such as tourism, thus further strengthening the city’s economy. As a whole, we could then say that we have realised the dream of a sustainable city.

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