An Urban design approach towards local area planning : an application in Negombo M

Abstract

The urban structure of Sri Lankan cities is more far behind considering the attractiveness, safety, competitiveness and its characteristics. Urban Planning process has been in Sri Lanka least contributes to spatial design of urban settlements. Existing planning process has been based on the land use activity approach which lacking behind the urban design of the settlement. Existing process. potential for a good urban structure merely ignored in the early stages of analysis and totally loosing the expected spatial form elements in the proposed plan. Hence. to be concern key component of urban form as well as to incorporated urban planning process of Sri Lanka. Previously. many researches had been done on urban planning and urban design but all studies had been adopted in western context. Those design strategies have not accommodated directly in Asian countries like Sri Lanka and have not addressed directly the urban form of the Asian Countries. This study attempts to give due consideration to shape these elements in to Sri Lankan situation in the context of geographical setting. culture. attitudes. behavior pattern, climate etc. Therefore, the study attempts to develop general strategies for the urban form of the Sri Lanka. It is based on the key elements of urban form namely, enrich the existing, make connections, work with landscape and mix use & form in order to insert and blend it into the present planning process and develop a conceptual framework based on the selected above urban form principles. Accordingly, It has been identified the general strategies through developing attributes into mechanism to implement the model concept. Ultimately, the study aims to construct a conceptual framework based on the above mentioned selected urban form principles. Part of Negombo Municipal Council was selected to experiment the spatial applicability of the strategies and demonstrate it as the case study.