An Evaluation of the application of land sharing technique in Sri Lankan context : the case of Sirmuthu Uyana housing development project in Colombo

Abstract

The importance of the problem of low income underserved urban settlements in the city of Colombo is beyond debate. According to the Urban Development Authority, 1999 Colombo Development Plan statistics there are about 68,000 dwellers living in different parts of the city are deprived of basic human necessities to lead a decent living. They do not have legal rights to their land and lack many services enjoyed by other settlers in the city. At the same time, the government finds it extremely difficult to allocate land not only for these dwellers but also for incoming migrant streams. The governments to date, in fact, have paid their due attention to solve this problem. Several land management techniques have been applied to tackle the growth of low income settlements while increasing the urban land supply such as land pooling, land zoning, land banking, and integrated programs like Sahaspura. However, those programs had their limitations in addition to the shortage of urban land and financial constraints. Therefore, it is suggested to adopt the land sharing technique in order to provide a solution to this problem. The technique is being practice in many Asian countries especially in Thailand, Indonesia and Cambodia and, to a limited it was practiced in Sri Lanka, too. It is a method that land owners and the occupants (squatters or tenants) reach an agreement whereby the land owners develop the economically most attractive part of the land and the dwellers built houses on the other part with full or limited land ownership (Archer, 1989). As results, some of their attempts have been successful while some of them are failed. So far none of formal institutions or individuals evaluates the application of land sharing technique in the context of Sri Lanka. The main task of the present research is to study an evaluation of application of land sharing technique in Sri Lankan context. The research was carried out in Edirisinghe Watta, Stadiumgama Watta & Lyma Watta at Sirimavo Bandaranayaka Mawatha, Colombo. The sites were amalgamated into one site and the total site was selected using a set of criteria and Land Sharing main principles. The collected data were analyzed and critically evaluated the applicability of the technique. According to the findings, the finalized result implies the most suitable criteria such as community organization, land sharing agreement, better cooperation of the landlord, capital investment, strong support from the outside agencies and lower the development pressure of the application of Land Sharing technique in Sri Lankan context.