Abstract:
Cities are one of the most comprehensive representations of a society and
its culture. Most urban built environments in the past have spontaneously
responded to ever evolving socio-cultural values as well as political and
functional needs of its population.
A city is a combination of identified elements that play a crucial role in
liveability. In a way, the individuals that come into contact with the city as
the hometown or the destination of work or passers-by have attachments
with those elements that shape the city character emerging the “image of
the city”. With numerous examples from all corners of the globe, it is a
general acceptance that the city’s liveability is directly related to its own city
image.
Colombo, the commercial capital of Sri Lanka has seen many changes
throughout the last few decades as a common fact in all Asian and South
East Asian countries face. With the introduction of the Post-Colonial
Administrative structures on the one hand, and the open economy based
financial cultures on the other hand, the city of Colombo is increasingly
fragmented into socially, culturally and economically diverse sub-cities or
functional districts. Under this notion this study looks at the subsequent
formation of urban edges and the possible role of these edges could play in
defining the city image to make the city liveable having the ultimate target
of sustainable urbanization.
The study is mainly bases on the Kevin Lynch’s study on the city image and
its examines the Downtown of Colombo.
Citation:
Mahawatta, T. (2016). Living on the edge a study on the socio-physical formation of urban edges as an image-defining element of city form: with special reference to Colombo downtown. In J.Wijesundara, & R.Dayaratne (E.ds.), Proceedings of the International Conference on Cities, People and Places ICCPP 2016. (pp. 295-320) Department of Architecture, University of Moratuwa