Abstract:
Under the city beautification project (CBP) in Colombo, the government of Sri Lanka embarked
on low-income high-rise housing projects to resettle approximately 68,000 low-income families
in Colombo. According to the state's discourse, the purpose of slum resettlement programme
was upgrading living standards of the urban poor. Accordingly, the government planned to
construct 14 housing schemes and few of them were completed. In this background, this study
argues that the slum resettlement programme has made adverse impacts on livelihoods of the
urban poor that decreased the living standards of majority of urban poor compared to their
previous status. The objective of this study was to identify the impacts of high-rise living on
the livelihoods of the urban poor. This study employed a range of primary and secondary data
sources; observations, key informants, semi-structured interviews and UDA reports on slum
resettlement project. Primary data was collected from 30 re-settlers of Mihindusenpura lowincome
high-rise housing project in Colombo. The findings reveal that livelihood activities of
the urban poor have been seriously affected by the slum resettlement programme. The causes
for the break-down of the livelihoods are breaking-up of the social network, lack of space in
the new apartments, restrictions of housing administration and distance from the original
location or city centre. Disconnection of community network has adversely affected the
livelihoods in few ways: loss of regular customers, loss of social support and loss of mutual
relationships between the customer and seller. Lack of space is also an issue which makes it
difficult to maintain the livelihoods of the re-settlers those who engaged in self-employments
such as maintaining grocery, food processing, laundry service, bicycle repairing and salons etc
in the previous place. On one hand, they do not have enough space in the new apartment to
maintain their ventures. On the other hand, due to restrictions of the housing administration
they cannot carry on their business. It is interesting to note that, most affected by the slum
relocation programme are women who engaged in self-employments as food providers or other
goods providers to shops closer to their homes. This study concludes that the state's motivation
was to liberate lands for market driven purposes than upgrading living standards of the poor.
The project leaders did not understand that livelihoods of the urban poor are connected with the
area they live in and around. Hence, project planners should seriously think about livelihood
restoration in future resettlement planning.
