City Plans and Construction Technologies in Colonial Sri Lanka

According to the historical sources, the first city plan of Colombo was prepared by an eminent British town planner, Sir Patrick Geddes, in 1921. As both a node of the imperial urban structure and the political center of Ceylon, Colombo, was the pivotal link between the British imperial and the Ceylonese colonial urban systems. Ronald Horvath has noted that the colonial city was the political, military, economic, religious, social and intellectual entry point between the colonizers and the colonized. A majority of the existing research is characterized by its critical special analysis of buildings and city planning, including elite and non-elite residential architecture designs in colonial period. But, the subject of the extent of colonial city planning with the object of projecting political power has not been adequately researched. Therefore, this research identifies how the planning, designing and architecture of Colombo city display colonial dominance. In particular, it is presented from a comparative perspective along with similar cities such as Bombay in the contemporary period. This research raises the problem of how colonialists’ laid out the symbols of power within the city plan of Colombo. It argues that they paid more attention to massive architectural structures which highlight the political power rather than public utility. The research examines certain specific structures and locations of Colombo (fort, port, military and police quarters, town hall, bungalows etc ) within the city plan. In addition try to investigate about perspectives of building construction techniques and methods, power imaged architectural designs, projecting systems. This research hopes to follow the scientific method of identification and the analysis of historical sources such as city plan, administration reports, sessional papers, dispatches, journals, newspapers etc.