Sri Lanka's planning system depends too much on numbers, setbacks, height limits, and floor-area ratios, even as what is approved on paper and what actually happens on the ground have created large gaps. What is overlooked or unnoticed is a much deeper problem, which shows that we are allowing buildings to go ahead while completely ignoring the systems that make cities work.

Across the country, development approvals proceed as if infrastructure will somehow follow through. Roads, drainage, and water supply are taken for granted, and sewerage, waste management, and public transport are treated as addenda. There is an implicit and dangerous belief that infrastructure has this strange tendency to catch up. As we know from experience, cities have never worked that way.

We inherited this problem from the era when we prioritised political expediency over professional integrity. It has deep historical roots, and we all know it, but we have turned a blind eye to it, as we have many other issues. For decades, land has been subdivided not as part of a well-planned, coherent urban strategy but to quickly generate financial gains, tacitly contributing to urban sprawl. Technically driven subdivisions, often carried out with little regard for access, space, servicing, or long-term urban impacts, turned land into a commodity to be sliced, packaged, and sold. They enriched landowners and intermediaries but left behind a fragmented urban fabric, which is extremely difficult to repair and retrofit.

What irresponsible land development has produced is now embedded in our cities. There are residential estates that you are very reluctant to enter, where you have to risk your vehicle for potential damage or accidents due to narrow access roads where even two vehicles can barely pass, or due to corners with no room to take the turn. The disconnected street networks have created mazes that are a nightmare to pass through. Inadequate drainage systems are causing surface water issues and flash flooding even after a small shower. Overstretched water and electricity infrastructure are also not uncommon. These are not isolated inconveniences; they are the cumulative outcome of unregulated, profit-driven subdivision practices that ignore the basic logic of city-making.

Urban growth turns into disorder rather than progress

What is more troubling is that even after extensive planning exercises, numerous plans launch, and celebrations of various achievements by many Governments, Ministers, Chairpersons, and Directors General, this pattern has not disappeared. It has persisted and continues, often with the tacit or explicit support of professionals who should know better. Unscrupulous actors, including some within the professions, still “professionally shop” projects, seeking approvals by any means possible, bending standards, and exploiting loopholes. Recent court proceedings have uncovered interesting facts about the development control practice. Planning authorities, including Local Government authorities, too often fail to enforce integration or demand system-level thinking. The result is a quiet but ongoing repetition of the same mistakes. 

Profit-makers wash their hands after the land sale is over, shifting the burden onto the public. Clearly, people with heavy loan burdens often buy land in good faith, build homes, and then face the consequences, such as congested streets, flooding, poor services, and declining environmental quality. Suburbs such as Battaramulla, Maharagama, Dehiwala, Mount Lavinia, and Kotte, along with many other suburban Districts, serve as everyday proof of this situation. We cannot call them planning accidents, but predictable results of decisions made without regard for systems.

The simple truth is that if infrastructure is not in place before development, expected urban growth turns into disorder rather than progress. Over time, this disorder, which was once merely inconvenient, escalates into structural chaos, erupting sharply during stressful moments and sometimes resulting in outright catastrophe.

Our past is only a label for glory

Despite our constant efforts to cling to our glorious past through rhetoric in politics and professionalism alike, we have failed to learn from our ancestors. They created this proud history for us to take pride in, we are not wise enough to learn from how they designed cities and put it into our planning practice. They did so long before modern planning regulations and engineering manuals with a far more sophisticated understanding of urbanism, grounded in systems thinking, ecological intelligence, and social purpose.

Anuradhapura, which epitomises the Sinhala civilisation, is not simply an archaeological relic, but a strong example of integrated city-making that offers many vital lessons in city planning. Anuradhapura was not a City that grew haphazardly and was later fixed. It was initially structured around water, land, trees, movement, and collective life, with buildings emerging only afterwards.

Its’ very location reflects this logic. Anuradhapura, situated along the Kadamba River (Malwathu Oya), was part of a broader hydraulic civilisation. Water was not viewed as a constraint to development to be addressed later but as the essential element around which the urban system was built. Through an intricate network of tanks, canals, and channels, water was captured, stored, distributed, and released in a carefully balanced cycle. Flood control, irrigation, domestic use, and environmental balance were not separate concerns; they were integrated into a single, continuous system.

This is the lesson that we have forgotten. As a country, we once built systems first and allowed the structures and activities to follow. Today, we approve buildings and activities first, hoping that systems will somehow catch up. This reversal is at the core of much of our urban crisis.

We have overlooked the fact that the hydraulic system in Anuradhapura structured the City spatially and socially. Settlement patterns followed water availability. Monastic complexes, civic institutions, and agricultural lands were positioned within these systems. Open spaces were not leftover land but deliberate components of climate regulation, ventilation, and social life. The City breathed because it was designed to do so. Movement was part of this system as well. Processional paths, access routes, and links between sacred, civic, and residential areas were clearly and intentionally designed. Infrastructure was not split into separate sectors, but was integrated across functions, connecting economy, spirituality, governance, and everyday life.

The Evolution of the Anuradhapura City

What defined Anuradhapura was not density or monumentality, but coherence — a City where every element, from the smallest channel to the largest reservoir, the common alms hall, linked to the residential quarters, markets, and stores, all contributed to a greater order. It was a City that understood limits, respected its ecological context, and expanded only in line with its capacity to sustain life. This is the lesson that we have lost. Today, we treat infrastructure as a secondary consideration — something to be negotiated, deferred, or retrofitted. In Anuradhapura, infrastructure was not secondary but was foundational. It was the condition upon which all development depended.

The contrast is stark. Two millennia ago, systems came first, and buildings followed. Now, buildings come first, and systems struggle to keep up. And that is precisely where our cities begin to fail. The chronicles, Mahavamsa and Culavamsa, do not describe Anuradhapura as a City that grew first and then struggled to support itself. They describe a civilisation that understood systems before settlement and organised its urban life accordingly.

From system thinking to fragmented growth

Today, we have reversed the logic that Anuradhapura followed. We build first and plan later. We approve and create density before ensuring mobility. We introduce housing without resolving drainage. We expand urban boundaries without securing water, energy, or waste systems. Each decision may appear reasonable in isolation, but collectively, they produce a city that is under strain.

What we are witnessing is not simply poor planning; it is planning out of sequence, and when the sequence is shuffled, systems derail and begin to fail. Floods are no longer rare events but predictable. Congestion is not an inconvenience but a structural condition. Infrastructure upgrades become reactive, expensive, and often insufficient. The city becomes a place that is constantly trying to catch up with itself.

Planning without infrastructure is planning failure

Cities decline gradually, not suddenly. It occurs through decisions that neglect what sustains them. Urban development pressures city systems, and if more buildings and activities are approved and built before supporting infrastructure like roads and amenities, they fail. Housing grows faster than water, transport, and public space are secured. What initially appears as growth slowly degenerates into congestion, then chaos, and ultimately, in moments of strain, floods, heatwaves, and breakdowns, culminating in a disaster. Examples are numerous, including chaos caused by land subdivisions and subsequent residential estates, the Urban Regeneration Programme and its predecessor, the Sustainable Townships programme, and the ever-expanding luxury and middle-income high-rise residential developments.

This is not a failure of development. It is a failure of sequence. Growth planned without infrastructure. Yet, if we step back into our own history, we find a very different logic of city-making, one that sustained urban life for over a millennium without causing chaos. When we talk about infrastructure today, we usually think of roads, pipes, and cables. But, in the great Cities of Anuradhapura and Polonnaruwa, infrastructure was understood much more broadly as the City’s essential life-support system.

Water was the foundation. The extensive network of tanks and canals, culminating in masterpieces like the Parakrama Samudra, was not just an agricultural system. It functioned as an urban infrastructure that managed floods, stored water, cooled the land, supported livelihoods, and shaped settlement patterns. The City was designed around water, not against it. Next came movement. Pathways, processional routes, and access networks linked temples, markets, dwellings, and institutions. These were not crowded corridors vying for space; they were integrated into the urban fabric, scaled to human movement, and woven into the landscape. Social and civic facilities followed. Monastic complexes, hospitals, alms-giving halls, parks, and educational institutions were not fringe elements — they were central to the City. They provided purpose, rhythm, and meaning. The urban form was not merely functional; it was civilisational. Even open spaces served as infrastructure. Large reservoirs acted as climate regulators. Tree cover and openness promoted ventilation. In this City, life thrived through its connections.

What is notable is not just the presence of infrastructure, but its importance. Development was not faster than infrastructure; it was driven by it.

The illusion of modern complexity

Many believe that our challenges today are more complicated than those faced by ancient cities. Clearly, technology has advanced. Our infrastructure now includes electricity networks, telecommunications, sewerage systems, and high-speed transport. However, the fundamental principles of city planning remain unchanged. But, infrastructure is still about supporting life before accommodating growth.

The ancients did not have digital networks, but, they understood networks. They did not speak of climate resilience, but, they built cities that responded to climate. They did not calculate lifecycle costs, but, they created systems that lasted for centuries.

We, on the other hand, often reverse the sequence. We prioritise visible development over invisible systems. We celebrate skylines while neglecting the ground beneath them.

Looking ahead

Moving from compliance to performance has been suggested. The focus however, should go further, shifting from fragmentation to integration.

A city is more than just a collection of buildings or projects. It is a dynamic network of systems like mobility, water, energy, ecology, economy, and community. Each one depends on the others and influences them in return. These systems do not operate in isolation; they overlap, support, and sometimes even weaken each other. When one system fails, the repercussions spread throughout the city. Yet, much of our planning regards the city as a series of separate parts. We approve sites, regulate plots, and manage developments as if they are independent. By doing so, we overlook the connections that enable a city to function.

Likewise, planning is not just about handling separate parts. It is about understanding how everything links together. When we plan without seeing the whole system, without bringing together infrastructure, environment, and social life, we are not truly planning. We are just approving results that we do not fully understand.

In many cases, this means that we are setting up tomorrow’s problems before they even happen.

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 United Kingdom

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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