• Why does urban planning matter to governance and justice in SL?
• Almost every urban difficulty experienced in Sri Lanka has a planning dimension

The town planner is the professional expected to bring together the many forces that shape cities, towns and human settlements. The planner is, in a sense, the brain behind the city: not because the planner possesses all knowledge or should exercise unquestioned authority, but because the planner must understand how the different parts of a settlement connect.

Why is planning so often ignored? How can planning improve urban governance? And, how can it support urban justice?

If you put these questions to people in the street, many might not feel compelled to answer. This is understandable. Planning is rarely explained in a language that connects with everyday life. People generally encounter it through a development application, a zoning rule, a building restriction, a notice from an authority, or a delay in obtaining approval. People therefore come to see planning as another layer of bureaucracy rather than a public function meant to improve their lives.

Yet, almost every urban difficulty experienced in Sri Lanka has a planning dimension. The morning traffic jam, the house that floods after heavy rain, the dangerous walk to school, the disappearance of a familiar tree-lined street, the polluted canal, the unaffordable dwelling, the overcrowded bus and the neighbourhood without a park are not isolated inconveniences. They are the accumulated consequences of decisions about land, infrastructure, investment, movement and public priorities.

Planning becomes visible precisely where it is absent.

A country with plans but too little planning

Sri Lanka does not lack planning institutions, legislation, development plans, or technically qualified professionals. The country has a long history of town and country planning. The Town and Country Planning Ordinance, the Urban Development Authority (UDA) Act, Local-Government legislation, Environmental laws, and numerous regulations provide an institutional foundation for guiding development. The UDA prepares development plans and exercises extensive development-control responsibilities, while Municipal Councils, Urban Councils, Pradeshiya Sabhas, Provincial institutions, and sectoral agencies can also influence the urban environment, albeit in theory under the current arrangements.

The problem is that the presence of plans does not necessarily mean that planning is taking place.

We have become accustomed to producing attractive plans, maps, proposals and visions that are launched with enthusiasm but only partially implemented. Political leadership changes, institutional priorities shift, projects are selected without reference to an agreed spatial framework, and urgent short-term demands displace long-term public objectives. Sometimes, the plan remains in an office while the city outside develops according to market pressure, political influence and individual opportunity.

Colombo provides many examples of the difference between planning and unplanning. Over several decades, successive plans have proposed solutions for transport, housing, environmental protection, urban regeneration and public space. Yet, people still spend hours travelling between home and work. Buildings continue to emerge in areas where roads, drainage, sewerage and water services are already under pressure. Wetlands and low-lying areas that once stored stormwater have been fragmented or filled, and we then search for engineering solutions when flooding becomes unavoidable.

This is not to suggest that nothing has been achieved. Sri Lanka has produced capable planners and undertaken significant urban projects. The difficulty is that individual projects, however impressive, do not by themselves create a well-planned city. A beautified street, a new tower, an expressway or a landscaped waterfront may be valuable, planning asks how each intervention relates to housing, livelihoods, public transport, environmental systems, local culture and the needs of surrounding communities.

Planning concerns relationships, not merely objects.

The house approved without the city being considered

Consider a familiar situation. A building is approved because it meets the requirements for that particular site. The setbacks may be acceptable, the parking spaces may be shown on the drawing, and the permissible floor area may not have been exceeded. From the viewpoint of the individual application, the development may appear satisfactory.

What happens when dozens of similar buildings are approved along the same narrow road?

Traffic increases. The water demand rises. Stormwater runoff intensifies. Waste generation expands. Parking spills onto the street. Trees disappear from private lots. The electricity network comes under pressure, while pedestrians, if there is any space left for them, must compete with vehicles.

Each building may have been assessed separately, no one has adequately considered their cumulative effect.

This is one reason that Sri Lanka misunderstands planning. Development control has increasingly come to stand for planning in the public mind. The planner appears at the end of the process to approve, reject or modify a proposal. By then, the land may have been purchased, the project designed, financial commitments made, and political expectations set. The planner is expected to process the application rather than ask whether the development contributes to a coherent and just settlement.

Building approval is necessary, it is only one part of planning. When planning is reduced to checking individual applications, the larger responsibility of shaping the city disappears.

Why is planning so easily ignored?

Planning is often ignored because its benefits are long-term, collective and sometimes invisible. Political and commercial decisions, by contrast, frequently seek immediate and visible results.

A road can be opened ceremonially. A tower can be photographed. A land release can generate revenue. A large project can be presented as evidence of development. The value of protecting a wetland, reserving land for a future school, or preventing development in a flood-prone area is harder to show. Good planning sometimes means that a disaster does not occur, a journey does not become longer, or a public asset is not lost. Political systems rarely celebrate what has been successfully prevented.

Planning may also inconvenience powerful interests. It may limit what can be built on a valuable property, require land to be set aside for public purposes, protect environmentally sensitive areas or insist that infrastructure be provided before development proceeds. Those who benefit from rapid or discretionary decisions may therefore regard planning as an obstacle.

Meanwhile, those who would benefit most from planning, the child who needs a safe footpath, the family seeking affordable housing, the street vendor needing a legitimate place to work, or the elderly person requiring accessible public transport, may possess the least influence over urban decisions.

Institutional fragmentation also weakens planning. One authority may manage a road, another drains, another land use, another public transport, and the Local Council waste. Each institution may act within its mandate, but, the city experiences the combined result.

Water does not respect administrative boundaries. Nor do traffic congestion, housing markets, labour movements, ecosystems or waste streams. Nevertheless, our urban governance frequently remains divided among institutions whose responsibilities overlap, compete or leave gaps.

The absence of effective metropolitan governance is particularly evident in the Colombo urban region. Colombo’s daily City extends far beyond the Municipal boundary. People travel into it from towns and suburbs many kilometres away. Some commute extraordinary distances because housing near employment is unaffordable. Yet, transport, housing, employment and infrastructure are not always planned as part of a single urban system.

From the village bus to the metropolitan commute

Understanding of planning does not begin with a textbook. It begins with seeing how access, or its absence, shapes a person’s opportunities.

One cannot take essential amenities for granted. Water comes from a neighbour’s well, sanitation is shared, and reaching the bus requires a two-mile walk. These experiences may seem far removed from contemporary discussions about metropolitan planning. In reality, they address the same fundamental question: How does the organisation of settlements affect human life?

A road, a bus service, a water connection, a school or a safe footpath can determine whether a person reaches education, employment, healthcare and social opportunity. Planning becomes meaningful when understood through these connections.

The modern version of that two-mile walk may be the Colombo worker who leaves home before dawn because affordable housing is unavailable near employment. It may be the domestic worker changing several buses, the street vendor repeatedly displaced from a place of livelihood, or the schoolchild walking beside fast-moving traffic because the road was designed only for vehicles.

These are not simply transport, housing or engineering problems. They reveal how urban advantages and burdens are distributed.

Planning gives governance a physical form

Urban governance is often discussed as though it is confined to institutions, elections, laws and administrative structures. But, people experience governance physically.

They experience it at the bus stop, in the public toilet, along the footpath, beside the drain and inside the market. They experience it through the time taken to reach work, the reliability of water, the safety of a street, the cleanliness of a neighbourhood and the ability to remain in a community undergoing redevelopment.

Planning gives governance its tangible spatial form. A Government may speak of equality, planning reveals whether it is reflected in access to housing, schools, hospitals, public transport, parks and essential services. A Government may promise economic development, planning reveals whether new investment strengthens surrounding communities or merely increases land values and displaces them.

Effective planning can improve governance by making decisions more transparent, coordinated and evidence-based. A credible plan should explain where development will occur, what infrastructure must accompany it, which environmental and cultural assets will be protected, and how public benefits and private responsibilities will be balanced.

This reduces the space for arbitrary decision-making. It also helps citizens understand what is proposed for their neighbourhoods and hold institutions accountable.

However, participation must mean more than displaying a completed plan and inviting comments after its principal decisions have already been made. People must be involved early enough to influence how problems are defined, priorities are identified, and alternatives are evaluated. Communities possess knowledge that cannot always be found in maps or official databases: where floodwater rises first, which shortcut children use, where women feel unsafe and which informal economic activities sustain local households. Professional knowledge and lived knowledge must meet for effective planning.

Urban justice is hidden in ordinary places

Urban justice may sound theoretical, it is encountered in ordinary situations.

It appears when a low-income family is relocated to a high-rise apartment but must spend more of its income travelling to work. It appears when a pavement is occupied or broken, forcing a person with a disability onto the road. It shows up when a community lives beside a polluted canal while affluent neighbourhoods enjoy cleaner, greener environments. It appears when redevelopment increases land values, but existing residents and small businesses receive few of the benefits. It also appears when a heritage neighbourhood is gradually erased without meaningful public conversation, or when public land is treated mainly as an asset to be commercialised rather than as a resource that might provide housing, parks, community facilities, or ecological protection.

Planning cannot remove every social inequality. It can, however, prevent urban development from deepening inequality.

This requires planners to ask questions that go beyond whether a project is financially viable or technically compliant. Who benefits? Who bears the cost? Who may be displaced? Can low-income households access the opportunities being created? Will women, children, older people and people with disabilities be able to use the resulting place safely? What will be left for future generations?

These are planning questions because justice is produced spatially.

We cannot import another country’s city

Sri Lanka frequently admires cities such as those in Singapore and asks why Colombo cannot become like them. International experience is valuable, planning cannot be imported as a finished product.

Our cities must grow from our histories, cultures, climates, landscapes, economies and community life. Colombo is not Singapore, Kandy is not another generic investment destination, and smaller Sri Lankan towns should not be forced into a metropolitan model that disregards their character and ecological setting.

A climate-responsive Sri Lankan city should work with shade, vegetation, airflow and water rather than replacing them with exposed concrete surfaces. A culturally grounded town should respect temples, churches, mosques, markets, meeting places and everyday patterns of community life. A socially responsible housing strategy should recognise livelihoods, family networks and transport costs, not merely the number of housing units produced.

The answer is not to reject international knowledge but to strengthen our own capacity to interpret it. Sri Lanka needs confident local institutions, professionally independent planners and communities capable of participating meaningfully in decisions about their future.

Planning must return to the public interest

The central problem is not that Sri Lanka has no plans. It is that planning has too often been separated from implementation, Local Governance, public participation and the everyday experience.

Planning must therefore be restored as a continuing public process rather than an occasional technical exercise. Local Authorities must have stronger planning capacity. The UDA, Councils, infrastructure agencies, Environmental institutions and Provincial bodies must work through clearer and more accountable arrangements. Planners must be brought into national, regional and local decisions before projects and locations are effectively predetermined.

Above all, planning must remain guided by the public interest.

The moral test of urbanisation is not how many towers are built, how much land is developed, or how much investment is announced. It is whether people are better off because of that development, whether they gain dignity, security, opportunity, mobility, belonging, and a healthier environment.

A city that does not plan is not free. It is simply surrendered to the strongest interests.

Planning will not create a perfect city. But, it can create a city that thinks before it acts, listens before it displaces, coordinates before it builds, and protects before it loses what cannot be recovered. For Sri Lanka, that is not an abstract professional aspiration. It is essential to good governance, urban justice, and the future well-being of our people.

The writer is a multidisciplinary urban planner, educator, and sustainable urbanism practitioner with over three decades of experience across Sri Lanka, Australia, the Pacific Island countries, and the UK 

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The views and opinions expressed in this column are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect those of this publication