Abstract:
Gentrification is a consequential effect of urban renewal which usually functions towards making
a city an economic powerhouse in the process of urban development. Gentrification contains
promises of “urban revitalization”; however, this process includes a lot of urban reshuffling, slum
clearance, slum relocation, and similar processes which do not benefit low-income citizens. This
study examined the current urban development of Sri Lanka, in terms of the architectural
strategies used which aid in incomplete gentrification, resulting in social segregation of income
classes, religions, and ethnicities.
This paper analyses the pros and cons of gentrification from the viewpoint of social reconstruction
and social polarization in accordance with different income groups. It discusses the co-dependent
relationship between society and architecture, and investigates alternative strategies for
gentrification which take the social structure into consideration, through the analysis of the
current urbanization of Slave Island. For this purpose, the urban process of Slave Island has been
followed by formal and informal interviews with the citizens, non-participant observations, as
well as extracting from prior studies from 2006 to 2021, paying special attention to the recent
when major development plans were implemented, and started undergoing drastic changes.
The results indicated that the urban development strategies implemented are currently causing
social segregation in the area. This paper examines the architectural aspects accountable for this
type of gentrification, as well as its driving forces for low-income people out of Slave Island,
leaving them with no homes or jobs. The urban development proposal and its expected outcomes
were weighed against the practical results of urbanization to examine how social segregation
happens from an architectural standpoint. Further, it proposed potential development strategies
that can be applied for all social groups to benefit mutually from urban development.
