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Colombo, the former capital of Sri Lanka (Ceylon before 1972), is principally a colonial product. From the early 16th century it had been the capital of colonial Ceylon under the Portuguese, Dutch, and British for four centuries. (1) It was built and restruc- tured according to contemporary European urban norms and standards. The colonial community also evolved with this colonial port city, both changing it and adapting to it.Yet, as I have argued elsewhere, the Housing Ordinance of 1915 introduced a new problem in Colombo: the municipal authorities began to view low-income neighbor- hoods as problems, as environments infested by urban problems such as ‘bad housing’ and ‘overcrowding’ (Perera, 2005). In this paper I will demonstrate that the transforma- tion which began with problematizing poor neighborhoods led to the construction of a new perception of the city based on a town planning discourse developed in Britain and the Empire. Town planning was not the only alternative, but the historical outcome of a series of negotiations highlighted in the following pages. In this paper I use town planning to separate the discourse by that name developed in Britain and modified in the colonies öcreating a third discourse öfrom other types of building, organization, and definition of space carried out by the colonial authori- ties and the indigenes. Also, by ‘perception’ I refer to an observer’s mental image of the city, including its social and cultural construction, differentiating it from the conception of new spaces or plans for a city and spatial practices which transform existing spaces to accommodate social and cultural processes. This is an adaptation of Henri Lefebvre’s triad (see Perera, 1998). The planners’ city: the construction of a town planning perception of Colombo Nihal Perera Department of Urban Planning, Ball State University, Muncie, IN 47304, USA; e-mail: [email protected] Received 10 March 2006; in revised form 6 November 2006 Environment and Planning A 2008, volume 40, pages 57 ^ 73 Abstract. The cities that administrators administer, planners plan, and scholars examine are perceptions that represent the absolute city ‘that is out there’. This paper narrates how a new perception of the city based on British town planning, modified within the Empire, was established in Colombo, the former capital of Sri Lanka. It focuses on the interpretation and representation of physical realities in Colombo using the norms imported through the Housing Ordinance of 1915 and later the town planning discourse. The ordinance problematized the living environments of the poor residents, requiring solutions that were not available in Colombo. Instead of solving these, the colonial/imperial planner Patrick Geddes, and the others who followed him, carried town planning to Colombo and kept rewriting its history. The new perception of the city focused the attention of the authorities on a capitalist city, which was lain over the colonial city, marginalizing the poor. In this way the colonial planners taught the Ceylonese urban authorities and planners how to perceive and act on the city from a town planning vantage point. The discourse was not directly imposed or imported, but negotiated between many agencies including the (British) municipal authorities of Colombo, the colonial government, colonial/imperial planners, the newspapers, and other stakeholders. Many changes to this perception were introduced in Sri Lanka after independence, but they do not represent any substantial cultural questioning of this discourse. This is the contribution of this study. doi:10.1068/a3987 (1) For the broader context of this argument see Perera (1998). In regard to Colombo see Brohier (1984), Dharmasena (1980), Hulugalle (1965).

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This paper narrates how a new perception of the city based on British town planning was established in Colombo, the former capital of Sri Lanka. The norms imported with the Housing Ordinance of 1915 and the larger town planning discourse problematized the living environments of the poor residents, requiring solutions that were not available in Colombo. The imported planning perception of the city focused the attention of the authorities on the capitalist city, ain over the colonial city, marginalizing the poor. Moreover, it made it necessary for authorities to intervene into poor neoghborhoods. Many changes to this (colonial) perception were introduced in Sri Lanka after independence, but they do not represent any substantial cultural questioning of this discourse. This is the contribution of this study.

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Page 1: Planners City

Colombo, the former capital of Sri Lanka (Ceylon before 1972), is principally acolonial product. From the early 16th century it had been the capital of colonial Ceylonunder the Portuguese, Dutch, and British for four centuries.(1) It was built and restruc-tured according to contemporary European urban norms and standards. The colonialcommunity also evolved with this colonial port city, both changing it and adapting toit. Yet, as I have argued elsewhere, the Housing Ordinance of 1915 introduced a newproblem in Colombo: the municipal authorities began to view low-income neighbor-hoods as problems, as environments infested by urban problems such as `bad housing'and `overcrowding' (Perera, 2005). In this paper I will demonstrate that the transforma-tion which began with problematizing poor neighborhoods led to the construction of anew perception of the city based on a town planning discourse developed in Britain andthe Empire. Town planning was not the only alternative, but the historical outcome of aseries of negotiations highlighted in the following pages.

In this paper I use town planning to separate the discourse by that name developedin Britain and modified in the coloniesöcreating a third discourseöfrom other typesof building, organization, and definition of space carried out by the colonial authori-ties and the indigenes. Also, by `perception' I refer to an observer's mental image ofthe city, including its social and cultural construction, differentiating it from theconception of new spaces or plans for a city and spatial practices which transformexisting spaces to accommodate social and cultural processes. This is an adaptation ofHenri Lefebvre's triad (see Perera, 1998).

The planners' city: the construction of a town planningperception of Colombo

Nihal PereraDepartment of Urban Planning, Ball State University, Muncie, IN 47304, USA;e-mail: [email protected] 10 March 2006; in revised form 6 November 2006

Environment and Planning A 2008, volume 40, pages 57 ^ 73

Abstract. The cities that administrators administer, planners plan, and scholars examine are perceptionsthat represent the absolute city `that is out there'. This paper narrates how a new perception of the citybased on British town planning, modified within the Empire, was established in Colombo, the formercapital of Sri Lanka. It focuses on the interpretation and representation of physical realities inColombo using the norms imported through the Housing Ordinance of 1915 and later the townplanning discourse. The ordinance problematized the living environments of the poor residents,requiring solutions that were not available in Colombo. Instead of solving these, the colonial/imperialplanner Patrick Geddes, and the others who followed him, carried town planning to Colombo andkept rewriting its history. The new perception of the city focused the attention of the authorities on acapitalist city, which was lain over the colonial city, marginalizing the poor. In this way the colonialplanners taught the Ceylonese urban authorities and planners how to perceive and act on the cityfrom a town planning vantage point. The discourse was not directly imposed or imported, butnegotiated between many agencies including the (British) municipal authorities of Colombo, thecolonial government, colonial/imperial planners, the newspapers, and other stakeholders.Many changesto this perception were introduced in Sri Lanka after independence, but they do not represent anysubstantial cultural questioning of this discourse. This is the contribution of this study.

doi:10.1068/a3987

(1) For the broader context of this argument see Perera (1998). In regard to Colombo see Brohier(1984), Dharmasena (1980), Hulugalle (1965).

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Understanding the city is central to the practice of urban planning and management.Yet, the city that each person talks about, functions within, and acts upon is arepresentation. A re-presentation is neither an authentic copy of the original, nora natural depiction of th `absolute' city, `the one that is out there'. The city is known,managed, and transformed through images and statements which together create thelarger discourse. The city begins to make sense to the observer and takes its materialform through individualized cognitive frameworks of the culture, with its own baggageincluding the premises, assumptions, biases, beliefs, interpretations, and narratives.Seymour Mandelbaum (1985) argues that cities are not (given) systems, but mentalconstructs; people designate particular systems as cities. As a person talks about thecity, so she or he creates and shapes it on her or his own terms.

Hence, the city is not one. `̀ the discursivity of the city is indelibly multiple andheterogeneous, and the discursive regimes across which the city has been constituted donot coincide'' (Tagg, 1996, page 180). It differs from one observer to the next, depend-ing on the time and place from which it is observed, the worldview within which it isperceived, the knowledge applied, and the language employed to build it. In JohnTagg's words (1996, page 180, emphasis in the original):

`̀we might note the languages in which the city is taken to be knownöthe languagesof economics, sociology, statistics, surveys, case studies, demographics, cartography,photography, `empirical documentation': languages not only for describing the city,but languages of the city; languages that emerged with the city in the nineteenthcentury and through which the city emerged; languages embedded in the techniquesand technologies of disciplinarity, ... and in which the city and its flows wereconstituted as knowable, graspable, harnessable and controllable.''Although they may be well informed, the administrators', planners', and scholars'

cities are also perceptions constructed through the identification and definition ofparticular social structures, processes, and their territory as urban. In regard to plan-ning education, Susan Fainstein (2005) argues that the distinction between urbantheory and planning theory is not intellectually viable. In contrast to general observers,including those who live in cities, and most scholars, the administrators' and planners'cities (perceptions) are strongly influenced by urban conceptions. They tend to have anotion of what a `good' city is, and that influences how they perceive the city. PatsyHealey (2003) highlights that concepts such as `good' and `just' are also constructed.Although they apply informed views, the city authorities and planners do not haveprivileged vantage points. Highlighting the potential gaps and incongruences betweenthe planners' conceptions and the lived city, Robert Beauregard (1993, page 7) stressesthat, `̀ If the discourse is not credible, then the practical advice is likely to be ignored orviewed with great skepticism.'' An attempt to bring perceived, conceived, and livedcities closer together is evident in the recent interest in planning `as storytelling'(Forester, 1999; LeBaron, 2002; Sandercock, 2004).

Despite the apparent coherence between the absolute city and its images, there areintellectual gaps between the representations and the represented. The correlationbetween these is constructed through various interpretations. Models are significantbuilding blocks of urban perceptions. Tropes are representations of the `physical' citythat constitute the way in which observers understand and explain it. The constructionand institutionalization of these is what E W Burgess and his colleagues undertook inthe 1920s by making a concentric zone diagram symbolizing an abstract microscopicview of urban succession. Approaching from a different (second) angle, scholars ofurban political economy consider that a society is made up of social classes, and theconflict between these defines the particular class society. The city is the stage uponwhich opposite classes clash and enact the class struggle. This is a synecdoche which

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presupposes a totality for the part. Taking a third approach, many cultural studiesscholars attempt an ironic distancing from the project of science and the trope ofsynecdoche, both of which take a metaphoric, objective/scientific mode of description(for a broader discussion see Duncan, 1996). Land-use and zoning maps that plannersprepare are also re-presentations of the city built through abstract categories of landuses and zones; while land-use maps are more of a perception, zoning maps are aconception. Each of these models attempts to provide a representation as close aspossible to the absolute city from its perspective.

The hegemonizing of selected representations involves social power, the capacity ofsome subjects to intervene in a given situation, to impose their will on others by thepotential or actual use of violence, and to transform them (Castells, 1989; Giddens,1987). John Logan and Harvey Molotch (1987) demonstrate the power of the `growthdiscourse' in the USA, particularly how c̀ity leaders' have depicted growth as develop-ment and privileged exchange value over use value. The members of `growth coalitions'who have turned cities into `growth machines' have portrayed themselves as genuinepromoters of development and a higher quality of living for average citizens. In herinvestigation of the meaning of gated communities, Setha Low (2003, page 116) high-lights the power of fear of crime: `̀ even with a 27 percent decline in violent crime rates[in NewYork city] between 1993 and 1998, there was only a modest reduction in fear andworry.'' It is thus important to investigate the social power involved in the constructionand hegemonizing of selected urban perceptions, representations, and discourses, whichmarginalize others.

In `̀ Exporting planning'', Anthony D King (1980) argues that modern planning inpostcolonial states is a European product and that colonialism was the vehicle oftransfer. I build on this argument, but investigate the development in the 1910s and1920s of a new perception of Colombo based on a town-planning discourse developedin Britain. Making a more grounded, place-specific study, I shift the vantage point ofinquiry to Colombo. As Joe Nasr and Mercedes Volait (2003) highlight, the transferof planning ideas is complex. Diversifying the agencies involved and the colonizerand the colonized binary, this study examines the voices of the intermediaries. Theyinclude the (British) municipal authorities of Colombo, the colonial government, colo-nial/imperial planners, the newspapers, and the Ceylonese elites. Although the newdevelopment in Colombo was an instance when understandings that were developed inBritain and the Empire became hegemonized over the prevalent colonial and eliteunderstandings of the city, the British views were not directly imposed on Ceylon.The paper investigates the process of negotiation between the above actors.

The study is situated in the area of colonial/postcolonial urbanism. Building onearly studies which engage in social and cultural analysis (for example, McGee, 1971;Redfield and Singer, 1954) and approaching from a number of theoretical perspectives,scholars of colonial urbanism have, from the mid-1970s, begun to expose the politicaland social power involved in the historical construction of social space and the con-nections between colonial policies and spatial subjectivity (Al-Sayyad, 1992; Crinson,1996; Home, 1997; King, 1976; 1990; Kusno, 2000; Metcalf, 1989; Mitchell, 1991;Rabinow, 1989; Ross and Telkamp, 1985; Saueressig-Schreuder, 1986; Wright, 1991).Scholars have not only exposed the Euro-American vantage point that most studiesin colonial and postcolonial urbanism have adopted, but also attempted to acknowl-edge agency of the indigenes (see Berking et al, 2006; Bishop et al, 2003; Goh, 2002;Hershkovitz, 1993; Hosagrahar, 2005; Nasr and Volait, 2003; Perera, 2002; Yeoh, 1996;Zhang, 2001). Contributing to this developing field of study, I approach the issue froma social production of space standpoint and a Ceylonese vantage point.

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From urban problems to town planningThe living environments of the urban poor that the Colombo municipality identifiedas problems in the 1910s and the basic conditions and information it used to makethis `discovery' existed by the end of the 19th century. The agency that developed thisperception, the Colombo Municipal Council, had been established in 1865. The demolitionof the fort walls in 1869 had eliminated the physical containment of the growth oflarger British and Lankan settlements into each others' areas. The expansion of Britishcolonial engagement in the city from the original colonial fort area to a larger munic-ipal area in the 1860s to 1880s had brought the areas that were later viewed asproblems under the direct purview of city authorities. The collection of census dataacross the Empire from the 1870s had made the quantitative data necessary for the iden-tification and measurement of these problems available. As I have argued elsewhere(Perera, 2005), it was the Housing Ordinance of 1915 which provided the frameworkwithin which to identify the residential environments of the poor as problems (Govern-ment of Ceylon, 1915). This gave rise to a new class-based view of Colombo in whichlow-income areas began to be seen as problems.

Urban problems were not new to Colombo. Before 1910, however, the municipalityfocused on public health and engineering and not on overcrowding and physicalresponses to social problems. It was reactive, responding to what it identified asproblems. In the 1910s it was a norm, or a conception, of a good city that provided anew perception of the city. The definitions, particularly of `inhabited room', `habitableroom', and `public building', were based on the British Municipal Councils Ordinance,Number 6 of 1910 (Ceylon Observer 1915). The ordinance required that every inhabitedroom receive a minimum amount of light and air: to have a minimum floor space of 36square feet and 136 cubic feet of air space per person and not to exceed 50 persons to theacre. The new vision is evident in the language the authorities used: the problems of poverty,disease, overcrowding, bad housing, and the absence of sanitation. The attention had shiftedto the low-income population, particularly to how bad were their housing and livingenvironments.

In 1916, less than a year after the enactment of the ordinance, the Kochchikadearea, near the harbor, was declared insanitary under the ordinance (figure 1). In thisway the municipality employed its new discovery as a fact and made it necessary for itto intervene. Kochchikade and other low-income areas were thus made visible throughthis discourse, but simply to make them invisible.

The incompatibility of the ordinance with the extant institutional and legal frame-works within which it was expected to take effect soon became evident. Prior to theenactment of the ordinance, a committee appointed by the municipality to look atincompatibilities opted to respect the principles of the bill, based on the UK ordinance(Ceylon Observer 1915). Contradicting its own complaints about overcrowding, forexample, the committee reduced the overcrowding standards that the municipalityhad been trying to enforce. Later, in 1920, the chairman of the Board of Improvementsobserved that, `̀ with its numerous amendments [the ordinance] is not an effectiveinstrument. It needs revision, if not re-modelling. ... [Otherwise] the Board will reacha legal impasse at every hand's turn as it and the Municipal Council already know byexperience'' (Municipality of Colombo, 1923, page 18). Yet, instead of adapting theordinance to ground conditions (the lived spaces), the authorities opted for two alterna-tive courses of action. First, the municipality began amending the legal and institutionalinfrastructure to suit it. It borrowed other laws such as the Land Acquisition Ordinanceto fulfill the goals of the housing ordinance (Municipality of Colombo, 1926, page 9).Second, the authorities began to see the need for town planning:

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`̀The Housing Ordinance of 1915, by laying down the necessary restrictions onbuildings ... has ... seriously hampered building, because the Ordinance is largelynegative, preventive value; but is totally incomplete without its logical and necessarycorollary, town planning. ... The Public Authority which makes such regulationsmust lay out the city at the same time'' (Municipality of Colombo, 1923, page 17).

As Matthew Edney (1999) argues in regard to cartography, the discourse within whichthe ordinance lay is a science of domination; it established boundaries and securednorms, treating questionable social conventions as unquestionable social facts. In thisway, the municipality opted to perfect the perception introduced by the ordinance byadopting town planning.

Figure 1. City of Colombo 1911.

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The case for town planningThe municipality was ambiguous and hesitant to embrace town planning, especiallydue to the lack of financial resources. As town planning was new, its potential cost waslargely a speculation. Although the voices of the poor are not recorded, the upperstrata of the civil society, both the colonial community and the Ceylonese elite, wererepresented in the debate from 1915 by the two major newspapers, the Ceylon Observerand The Ceylon Daily News (Daily News). The former, which started as a `free' news-paper by the colonial community in 1834, had a history of taking anticolonial positionsin the 19th centuryöunder previous owners. It took the position that the municipalitycould not afford town planning and should concentrate on the more urgent issue ofhousing for low-income earners. The Daily News, which was new, owned by theCeylonese newspaper magnate, D R Wijewardena, stressed the need to introduce townplanning. The Housing Ordinance had introduced new urban problems that could notbe `solved' within the knowledge that existed in Colombo. Moreover, the ordinance hadimported aspects of a perception of the city developed within the town-planningdiscourse in Britain. These opened the way for town planning to be imported andthe case was strong.

On his way to India in 1919 colonial town planner H V Lanchester told the press inColombo that `̀ the conditions of the city of Colombo are better than those of Indiancities, about three-fourths of which were slums [sic]'' (Daily News 1919a). Yet the DailyNews was insistent on the need for planning: `̀ Colombo seem to have outgrown theDutch ideal and is developing on a line hitherto unrecognized'' (1919a). The municipalleaders and the newspapers feared the `unrecognized' environments of the poor whichhad been turned into a problem by the Housing Ordinance. The authorities weredetermined to refamiliarize these neighborhoods for the colonial community and theCeylonese elite.

The Daily News continued to apply pressure on the government to invite PatrickGeddes, who was in India at that time. It complained about sprawl and the possibilityof Matara (72 miles south of Colombo) becoming a suburb of Colombo, as Wellawatta(3 miles south) had just become. It also attacked the lethargy of the government toembrace town planning and insisted that the municipality should engage the services ofa town planning expert. Intensifying the discussion, the Daily News (1919b) also adver-tised a conference on ``the housing question'' held in London. It was looking to Londonfor ideas. These arguments also highlight the fact that the discussion had moved awayfrom the original issue of living conditions of the poor to more comfortable townplanning and new ideas from Britain.

The municipality was uncertain about its ability to afford town planning. Askingwhere to begin, the Chairman of the Municipal Council, T Reid (October 1919 ^ July1924) wrote in 1920:

`̀ In Colombo, a large percentage of the population live in a state of comparativepoverty. The port is an infected port; plague is endemic, and phthisis, enteric, andother serious diseases prevail to an undesirable extent. The standard of healthand municipal administration are higher than they are in most Oriental cities;but they are low enough to warrant the application of the truism that one mustlive before one tries to live well. Applying this rule, it is not apparent that theBoard should start on ornamental schemes. It has to deal with the most elementaryneeds, the crudest necessities of the city life before it can aspire to expensiveamenities'' (Municipality of Colombo, 1923, page 16).Going beyond whether to adopt town planning or not, a third group raised the

issues of low incomes, high rents, and real estate values; looking beyond the physicalenvironment, it continued to politicize the issue of poverty. The Ceylon Observer

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pointed out that the debate was overlooking the housing issue. In the editorial on21 January 1920, it highlighted the importance of looking beyond financial difficultiesand doing something about the housing problem' (Ceylon Observer 1920a). In this way,it highlighted the significance of housing the poor and kept shifting the responsibilityback to the government. It stressed that `̀ The need for Colombo at the present time ishouse construction, not beautiful bungalows laid out in picturesque surroundings witha wealth of greenery and scenic beauty. The houses must be cheap, in view of the highcost of living'' (Ceylon Observer 1920b, page 323).

The municipality believed that, in the short run, bad houses are better than nohouses, a situation that was worsened by the controls introduced by the ordinance.Denham (in Dharmasena, 1980) argues that between 1891 and 1911 the supply ofhousing in the city as a whole was far from satisfactory and it was worse in the PettahDistrictöColombo's wholesale district adjacent to the Fort area and the port. Theincrease in the number of houses in Pettah was to some extent due to the subdivision oftenements and the inclusion of temporary `sheds' and boutiques in the census reports ashousing. Denham projects that from 1880 to 1900 the rents of tenements rose by about50% while in the next decade (1901 ^ 11) they rose by about 60%. The municipalityappealed to large-scale employers to follow the example of plantations in providinghousing for their own labor force. Although this did not solve the problem, the publicsector responded by building several housing schemes (Dharmasena, 1980).

In the meantime, the inhabitants of these neighborhoods were creating their ownsolutionsölived spacesöto the problem of housing as they saw it. Marginal groupscan always read and write different meanings into spaces through creating new spacesas well as redefining existing spaces, making these a part of their ongoing negotiationswith authorities and other groups (see Goh, 2002; Holston, 1989; Hosagrahar, 2005;Law, 2002; Perera, 2002; Turner, 1991; Yeoh, 1996; Zhang, 2001). The more immediateresponse of the low-income people to their housing issue was quite ordinary. As LindaHershkovitz highlights, in regard to the Tiananmen Square incident, the appropriationof space as a

`̀ platform from which to communicate alternative or oppositional political messagesis part of the social process that continually produces and transforms social space.No matter how temporary the appropriation, or how permanently its traces areeradicated, the very fact of its existence, the memories and associations it evokespermanently changes the face of the place in which it occurred'' (1993, page 416).

The tenants who found it difficult to pay the increased rents increased the number ofresidents in the chummery (apartments shared by males in the colonial city). In thecase of family dwellings, the residents invited another family to live. This was partic-ularly the case in the docklands area (Denham in Dharmasena, 1980, page 131). Theincrease in numbers of occupants in existing buildings and increase in the building ofself-built housing created a hybrid environment that is not recognizable within theplanning discourse built with clean and authentic categories.

Reid's report of 1920 questions the municipality's ability to resolve the urbanproblems: `̀ The housing problem in the city is the result of lack of land for extensionin North and Central Colombo and the growth of population. All classes are short ofhouses and the inevitable rise in rents has taken place, and will continue, unless thesupply of buildings can be made to meet the demand'' (Municipality of Colombo, 1923,page 17). Despite the housing deficit, the municipality continued to impose standardsand embraced town planning. Later, in 1927, a municipal report highlighted that thelabor was `̀ becoming more self-conscious and regards higher wages as the panacea ofall its ills'' (Municipality of Colombo, 1926, page 9). The social issue of poverty andlack of housing was later taken up by socialists in the 1930s.

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The Geddes proposalsThe government invited Geddes in 1919 and he arrived in Colombo in 1920. To thesurprise of the local authorities and the newspapers, Geddes saw a `successful' city inColombo: its port was the third largest in the Empire and the fifth largest in the world(Hulugalle, 1965). As is evident in this observation, as a colonial planner who has beenworking across the Empire including in India, Palestine, Aden, and Cyprus, his contextwas `global'. Although the `̀ people largely crowd inward towards the bazaars'' in India,he said, the Ceylonese `̀ seem to preserve their rural spirit'' (Geddes, 1921, page 6). Yet,none of the these observations would prevent him from planning; his thinking wasdriven by the urban conception.

Most crucially, Geddes helped the municipality to develop a new conception of thecity which privileged the capitalist processes and upper classes. According to him,`̀ the harbour ... must necessarily always be the chief center of commercial life'' andthe roads leading to it needed to be opened up (Municipality of Colombo, 1923,page 17). In this way, displacing its original problem concerning the living environmentsof low-income inhabitants, he drew the attention to the colonial ^ capitalist city, itslarger organization, and the political and economic core. The impact of this discourseis evident in Reid's view in 1923:

`̀ [The current] state of affairs does not result merely in traffic congestion and streetaccidents. It makes it impossible to serve the city properly with public conveyances,such as trams or buses. ... One of the Board's first tasks in solving the housingproblem will be the opening up of main arteries of traffic by widening existingroutes or by devising new routes ... . If this were done, the housing problem, or atleast the bungalow and middle class house problems, would be solved to a largeextent very soon'' (Municipality of Colombo, 1923, pages 17 ^ 18).

He thus shifted his attention to bungalows, middle-class houses, and arteries. Accordingto the municipal engineer's report of 1924, the opening up of main arteries wasvigorously carried out in 1922 ^ 23 and the new Colpetty (Kollupitiya) road was alsowidened (Municipality of Colombo, 1924).

As often noted in the phrase c̀onservative surgery', (see Meller, 1990), Geddesadopted a cautious approach to changing the extant spatial organizations. In Colombo,he opposed the demolition of housing of the poor in Kochchikade. He warned theboard not to follow destructive methods adopted by Indian Improvement Trusts andnot to look for immediate profits (Daily News 1920a), but to look for indirect returns inthe way of public health (Daily News 1920b). He was more comfortable in co-optingpoor neighborhoods into the dominant paradigm through c̀onservative surgery'.Despite noting that large-scale slum clearance would be harmful, and should not becarried out on too sweeping a scale, Geddes recommended the gradual execution ofmetropolitan legislation in the colonial city (Hulugalle, 1965, pages 171 ^ 172). Theapproach was conservative, but the objectives were driven by planning and guided byimported norms. The planning discourse thus could not solve the problem of poorhousing conditions, but maintained it in the margins.

Geddes's concept was grand and the suggestions were broad. The proposal includedthe topics of public health, the principal health, the principal slum, Kochchikade, SanSebastian, Queen's House, the new town hall, a public library, Galle Face,Victoria Park,the new art gallery, the horticultural garden, Kelaniya River, and the harbor (Daily News1920a). There is a section on `̀ the Principal Slum'', but the discourse was no longerabout overcrowding. He further reinforced the colonial perceptions of the city byidentifying the colonial areas as beautiful: the colonial residential area of CinnamonGardens, the adjoining elite areas, and the railway tracks. Even the railway lines weremore familiar to him than the local low-income areas. He continued to stress the

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significance of formal areas and of making the city beautiful, and drew a comprehensivetown plan for it (Municipality of Colombo, 1924).

In regard to the newspapers, just before the arrival of Geddes, the Daily Newsencouraged planning and the invitation of Geddes. When the municipality decided toinvite Geddes in 1919, the Daily News showed its enthusiasm: it reported that `̀ it is nowdecided to appoint'' Geddes as the local town-planning expert and published a reporton ``Municipal Enterprise: The Needs of a City'', which highlighted the activities ofmunicipalities in France, Germany, and England (1919c). Representing the Ceyloneseelite, the newspaper was looking up to the West.

The Ceylon Observer was, however, lukewarm. It argued for the prioritization ofthe immediate issue of housing and viewed planning as a drain on municipal resources.After his arrival, the newspaper was critical of Geddes for being uninformed aboutlocal conditions, particularly that the municipality could not afford big projects withinits budget. In regard to his report, it noted that Geddes wrote `̀ an interesting enoughreport as predicted ... but it ... contains little of actual practical value'' (Ceylon Observer1920d). In its editorial ``City beautiful'', the newspaper asked where the money wouldcome from (1920c). Geddes was further criticized for suggesting the purchase of 165acres for a wet dock in Mutuwal, adjacent to the port (1920e).

Experts coming from Britain and the municipality seeking expert opinions were notnew in Colombo. Yet, the invitees were not urban planners (of Geddes kind), nor didthey have the expertise to intervene inöor to ignoreöthe neighborhoods of the poor.They were technical experts who focused on roads, pipes, and telephone lines. In 1898,the well-known London engineer James Mansergh was invited to give advice oninsanitary conditions. His focus was on drainage and he developed a water carriagesystem plan for the city (Ridgeway, 1903). The municipality also carried out someprojects in response to various problems; for example, it built the Labugama andMaligakanda reservoirs for drinking water supply, which are still in use, and was alsoconcerned about the electricity supply (Municipality of Colombo, 1920).

Town-planning ideas were also discussed before the 1910s. The Municipal EngineerR Skeleton advocated building regulations as early as 1890; in 1897, ChairmanW Davidson suggested the Hausmannization of congested parts of the city, and thelaying down of building lines in every street, to which all future buildings would berequired to conform,(2) in 1898 a Municipal Committee on overcrowding urged theneed for greater control over buildings (Municipality of Colombo, 1924). The discussionof overcrowding and Haussmanization indicates that problems and debates somewhatsimilar to those identified by the municipality in the 1910s existed at the turn of thecentury but, despite some exceptions such as the 1898 report, the municipality largelyresponded (reacted) to problems. With the introduction of the Housing Ordinance, theproblems were constructed within a framework of a good city, and town planningopted to create a whole new future for the city, but within a town-planning historydeveloped in Britain and the British Empire. Hence, the principal concerns, goals, andobjectives of the municipality clearly became different after 1915.

In this way Geddes guided the development and urban perception in a newdirection. Instead of `theorizing' the local situation, which had been attempted by theauthorities, within their colonial third culture, a town-planning `theory' was applied tothe situation. Noah Hysler-Rubin (2005) argues that Geddes had a fully developedurban model by the time he had first left for India in 1914. This made the authoritiesview planning as the panacea of urban ills.

(2) Haussmannization refers to a massive transformation carried out in Paris in the mid-19thcentury.

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Geddes (1921, page 9) was flexible and identified potential incompatibilities:`̀ garden village principles and methodsöwhich are already naturally in the traditionof Colombo and Ceylon, and only need a little developmentöare now distinctlyadopted and established, and strictly maintained by the Municipality and Board;and this will, no doubt, require some emendation and strengthening of theirpresent housing by-laws. The British town planning limit of 50 persons to theacre is not as yet easy to apply here.''

In regard to evictions, Geddes (1921, page 37) suggested that the municipality:`̀ put a stop to the old procedure of destruction before rebuilding, and to proceed torebuild before we begin to destroy. The law at present claims impartially to defendthe life and property of all men; but it is not adequately doing either, until itprotects the poorest citizen from eviction from his home, however insanitary orhowever needed for public purposes, until some reasonable accommodation can beoffered him elsewhere. But at present the law operates usually on the other side,and the poor man is evicted accordingly.''Yet, the power of the discourse is evident in that he too opted to plan the city and

even to apply density figures close to those employed by British town planners in orderto avoid height and crowding of buildings as in Bombay (Geddes, 1921, page 9).

In sum, the issues raised by the introduction of the Housing Ordinance could notbe solved within any knowledge possessed by the municipality or the colonial commu-nity, let alone by the Ceylonese. The issues belonged to a different imagination of thecity and were based on the kind of disorder in the city the authorities saw withinthe language and the perception provided in the ordinance. Hence, the municipalitywas compelled to invite someone who knew about these issues, and they opted to invitea town planner who had also developed within the discourse. The planner completed thefamiliarization of the city within the British colonial discourse.

Exporting planning perceptionsThe language in which the above problems were perceived, codified, and representedwas derived from town-planning discourses developed in Britain over the previous halfa century. Town-planning ideas and ideology were constructed and developed in aparticular location, by particular social groups, within a particular culture, in responseto particular conditionsöthat is, the problems caused by the industrial city. Yet,planning was seen as a `science' of making particular decisions, and (Western) scienceis considered culturally neutral, contextless, abstract, and can, therefore, be general-ized. At the same time, but in a different place, the colonial Governor of Nigeria, LordLugard (1900 ^ 19), instructed his officers that, whether in the development of materialresources or the eradication of disease, `̀ the British role was to bring to colonies all theso-called gains of civilization by applied science, with as little interference as possiblewith native customs and modes of thought'' (Lugard, 1919, page 9, in Home, 1983,page 166). As it was produced in the center of the Empire, the town-planning discoursewas generalized and exported to colonies, and globalized through colonialism, sub-ordinating any alternative form of knowledge that might have existed in those societies,and erasing most of the diversity created by such discourses.

The premise necessary for this exporting is that the world is objectively knowable,and the knowledge so obtained is generalizable and exportable (see Apffel-Marglin,1996). The generalizable knowledge was viewed as superior to the local knowledge ofthe colonial authorities in Colombo, which was locally produced and not generalizable.According to Stephen Marglin (1990, page 24), the knowledge system of managementin the West is characterized

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`̀ not only by impersonality, by its insistence on logical deduction from self-evidentaxioms as the only basis of knowledge, but also by its emphasis on analysis, itsclaim that knowledge must be articulate in order to exist, its pretense to universality,its cerebral nature, its orientation to theory and empirical verification of theory, andits odd mixture of egalitarianism within knowledge community and hierarchicalsuperiority vis-a© -vis outsiders.''

Tariq Banuri (1990) argues that the intellectual dominance of the `Western model'derives not from its inherent and unequivocal superiority but, rather, from the politicaldominance of those who believe in its superiority and who have been able to devoteattention and resources to legitimize modernization as Westernization.

It was precisely within the metropolitan and colonial discourses that had the leastto do with Colombo that the planning discourse in Colombo was constructed. InCeylon, the British experts saw what they knew: problems similar to those in industrialcities in Britain and an opportunity to plan and provide a future that was proposed inBritain. Instead of the immediate problems of `overcrowding' and the incompatibilityof the Housing Ordinance and the ground realities, Geddes emphasized the signifi-cance of larger development and beautification of the city. As Edward Said (1978,page 11) argues, ``no production of knowledge ... can ever ignore or disclaim itsauthor's involvement as a human subject in his own circumstances.'' As Dora Epstein(1998) asserts, planners view the city as a threatening other that needs to be made saferather than focusing on the city's positive and pleasurable associations.

At the same time, this discourse created a space for what Leonie Sandercock (1998)calls the heroic planner. Geddes built his ideas and proposals on the same discoursethat had caused the municipality to identify certain environments in Colombo as urbanand housing problems. In this way the urban debate which began with the HousingOrdinance hegemonized town planning, making it the natural way to understand anddiscipline Colombo.

At this level, despite local negotiations, planning within the Empire was a practicecarried out across the boundaries of the colonies. Colonialism was invariably thevehicle by which both the idea and the practice of urban planning were exported tomany non-European countries. King (2003, pages 167 ^ 186) argues that `̀ the reason forthe persistence of colonial space and form is to be found in colonial regulation andbylaws and the internationalization of colonial values by planners.'' The export of townplanning ordinances was not limited to Ceylon, but was a wide-ranging process thatincluded the Calcutta Improvement Trust Act, the Bombay Town Planning Act, andthe Madras Planning Act enacted in 1909, 1915, and 1920. The overlay of the metropole'surban perceptions in colonies through the new town planning discourse is furtherevident in the extension of similar legislation to Rangoon, Singapore, and Lagos in1920, 1927, and 1928 (Home, 1990).

The issue of the relevance of this British discourse in socially, politically, econom-ically, and culturally different Ceylon was never raised. The housing ordinance, whichprovided the framework to employ the vital statistics of industrial metropolitan socie-ties as a point of reference to measure the status of health and housing of the Ceylonesepopulation, constructed the city as the threatening other, generating the need to bringthe city back to order. There was no one in Colombo who could respond to theproblems. It was this need in Colombo and other colonial cities that provided environ-ments for the rise of colonial planners such as Patrick Geddes, Clifford Holliday, andPatrick Abercrombie, and the internationalization of the planning profession across theEmpire, but within a town-planning discourse.

From a knowledge standpoint, colonial cities were Orientalized through theirabsorption into the metropolitan discourse of town planning. Bernard Cohen (1996)

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emphasizes that the British believed they could explore and conquer the epistemologicalspace through translation. In regard to planning, too, colonial authorities and experts`translated' urban conditions into knowledge by means of exported ordinances. Theyemployed a combination of, in Cohen's terms, historiographic, observational, survey,enumerative, and investigative modalities in constructing this complex discourse. Fromthe standpoint of Colombo, the planning discourse is premised upon exteriority.Colombo was thus reinterpreted through British middle-class values, making it trans-parent and known to the West. It is the Orient (the image) which speaks, describes, andrenders its mysteries plain for and to the West. This transforms Colombo from asubject to an object within the grand narrative of town planning. Hegemonizing thisunderstanding is more profound than physically building a city by foreign powers;this violates the epistemic structure of the Ceylonese and its colonial administrators.

Socially, this perception also promoted the view that there are physical solutions tourban ills and poverty. Within the town-planning discourse, it was not poverty and itscauses that were not acceptable, but the way the poor live in their environments andthe problems they caused to (middle-class) city life. This is not different to someauthorities and planners associating the disorder of the city with uncontrolled femalesexuality, which was seen as rectifiable through the controlling of women's access topublic urban spaces (see Wirka, 1998). In Colombo it focused on getting rid of the poorhousing and neighborhoods by cleansing them through slum clearance programs or byincorporating these into the middle-class city by making them adhere to its norms,which is currently called `gentrification'.

This class focus did not eradicate racial differentiation in the colonial city, but aclass ideology from Britain was overlain on the more race-conscious colonial urbansegregation. In regard to `swimming baths', Geddes highlighted those local practices inwhich `̀ people of different races and castes will not bathe together (1921, page 16).Instead of being egalitarian, or focusing on local differences caused by caste andreligion, he reinforced racial difference: `̀ True; even in Europe there are always firstand second class baths; and here it is easy to adopt this, with one bath at higher chargemarked `Tourists', which Europeans may also frequent'' (page 14).

As Said (1978, page 14) points out, a `̀ specialist argument can work quite effectivelyto block the larger and ... the more intellectually serious perspective.'' Despite itspolitics, town planning is presented as technological and aesthetic statements ratherthan political ones. This was both an alternative to politics and, as Abidin Kusno(2000) put it, a politics of the apolitical. Such ideas were in circulation in Europe inthe early 20th century. For example, Le Corbusier believed that good architecturecould prevent social revolution. In this way the discourse brushed aside the issue ofpoverty, which was later picked up by the socialists. This was the opposite of whathappened in Britain, where those who were concerned with poverty made significantcontributions to the development of planning. In this planning view, there is no roomfor the places produced by cultural variation (Duncan and Ley, 1997 [1993]).

Regardless of the problems, Geddes proposed to develop the `garden city' he saw inColombo on a much grander scale. His plan was for an area larger than what themunicipal boundaries contained, identified as Greater Colombo, beautified by the incor-poration of Beira Lake, the banks of which were then used by warehouses. Geddes(1921) thus argued that there is a need for a permanent town-planning office. As thiswould approach the city from a town-planning perception, in addition to the cities theybuilt the colonials also left their perceptions of these.

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Institutionalizing town planningIn proposing a plan for Greater Colombo in the 1920s, Geddes ignored the jurisdictionof the municipal council. The proposal for the development of Greater Colombocreated the need for a planning institution with a jurisdiction over a larger area thanthe municipality. The local authorities became concerned about the possibility of themunicipality becoming subjected to a larger regional authority. This made them tem-porarily detach from the Geddes Plan. Over two decades later in 1947 the colonialgovernment set up a separate department, the Town Planning Department, under itscontrol (see Government of Ceylon, 1946; Kurukulasooriya, 1997). In this way, townplanning came to stay in Ceylon.

Politicians, town managers, and planners alike viewed this hegemonic discourseapolitically, from a `public good' standpoint. Until the 1970s town planning had shownvery little creativity outside of this hegemonic discourse. In 1940, another Britishexpert, Holliday, claimed that a `̀ quarter of the entire population of Colombo isliving in slum areas and another [quarter] in houses under environments which fellbelow accepted modern standards'' (Hulugalle, 1965, page 172). He also recommendedprocedures, rules, objectives, and methods within the same discourse of town planning,and these were later incorporated into the Town and Country Planning Ordinance(Number 13) of 1946 (Economic Review 1977). One by one, the heroic imperial plannersrewrote the planning history of Ceylon within the town-planning discourse developedin Britain. They followed the colonial `historians' who, one after another, rewrote theLankan history (see Perera, 1998). The authors of this discourse defamiliarized anyindigenous notions of planning and rehistoricized it within the British planning history,absorbing Sri Lanka's future planning into a British planning tradition. This percep-tion of the city was carried on after independence by postcolonial politicians andurban planners.

This urban perception did not go unchallenged. The socialists, who organized intoa political party (Lanka Sama Samaja Party) in 1935, concentrated on the politicalaspects of poverty, a loose end within the larger urban discourse. The socialists and(later) communists not only had a political baseöboth electoral and trade unionöinColombo, but also actively protested against the so-called slum-clearance programs.Instead, they stood for legitimizing the rights of the `slum dweller', renters' rights, andrent control.With the nationalists gaining power in 1956, the political leaders of Ceylonbegan to show caution over continuing these colonial urban perceptions. Yet, despiteextending sympathy towards the urban poor, the changes in political perceptionsafter 1956 do not represent any cultural examination of the postcolonial planningperceptions. The dominance of the town-planning discourse is evident in the MayorV A Sugathadasa submitting in 1956 a plan for slum clearanceöaccompanied by ahousing scheme (Hulugalle, 1965). Raising suspicion over the hitherto hegemonicdiscourse, in 1962, the Municipal Commissioner reported that ``Despite the numberof pronouncements ... shanties are increasing in number. Regulations empowering[their] demolition ... has in practice been an ineffective instrument in solving theproblem'' (page 173). Much larger changes were introduced in the 1970s, but they donot represent any cultural questioning of this discourse.

ConclusionsThis is a story of how a planners' city developed within the British town-planningdiscourse became established and hegemonized in Colombo and Sri Lanka. Town plan-ning was developed in Britain in response to the problems caused by the industrial cityand was later modified within the context of the Empire. Yet, in early-20th-centuryColombo, it was an imported discourse which largely incorporated local conditions within

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its framework to create a representation of the city. This town-planning perceptionwas never directly imposed by the metropole on the colony. The importing of theperceptionöwith nonstructural adaptationsöwas negotiated between the municipalauthorities of Colombo, the colonial government, colonial/imperial planners, thenewspapers, and other stakeholders. The Housing Ordinance introduced in 1915 turnedthe living environments of the poor into problems, making it necessary for the munic-ipality to intervene in these. The debate surrounding this issue led to the invitation of theglobal ^ colonial planner Geddes who opted to plan the city. Through this process, atown-planning perception of Colombo was developed and institutionalized in Ceylon.

Town planning was not simply a way to solve urban ills, but also a way to understandthe city and codify its environments within the then developing capitalist perceptionsof the industrial city in Britain. This discourse, modified within the empire, was laidover the colonial perceptions in Colombo. Within this perception the city was viewed asa threatening and lacking other that needs some order, discipline, and help. This percep-tion went beyond turning the low-income people into the Other; it marginalized thepolitics of poverty.

What town planning produced in Colombo was an exterioröOrientalistöviewwhich tells the story of the city to the West and the Westernized elite in a way it canand wants to understand it. Beginning with Geddes, the heroic colonial town planners,one by one, updated the discourse, adding what was developed in Britain and withinthe Empire. Along with it, they taught the Ceylonese authorities and planners how toperceive the city as they did, within a British (colonial) planning history and perspec-tive, absorbing and transforming these Ceylonese and the next generations into subjectswithin the grand planning narrative. Since cities are tangible repositories of culturethat live for a long time, the impact of this discourse has been long lasting. In this way,they reproduced the dependency on the metropole even after political independence. Insum, this process violated the epistemic structure of the locals, most immediately thoseof the municipal authorities, amounting to epistemic violence.

Despite extending sympathy to the urban poor, the changes in political perceptionsafter 1956 do not represent any cultural questioning of this planning discourse. Theplanning perception is still dominant in Sri Lanka, and planners continue to look tothe West to improve their perception and approach. This is apparent in the recentdiscussion of sprawl, sustainability, and New Urbanism concepts, which are not locallyproduced in response to particular conditions.

The paper demonstrates that it is the planner's cityöa perceptionöthat enablesplanners to understand, examine, and modify the city, or a part of it. The planners andurban authorities do not have a privileged (value-free) vantage point from which toview the city, nor are their positions superior. The cities that administrators administer,planners plan, and scholars examine are perceptions that represent the absolute city`that is out there'. Many of today's planning-related problems, among successes, are areflection not so much of lack of planning but of perception: the social, political, andcultural incompatibility of the particular type of planning employed, and the lack ofempathy towards the subjects. This is precisely what makes the investigation of planningand other perceptions so important for the understanding of cities.

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