Urban Housing Policy in Sri Lanka

The main focus of this book is on understanding the emerging relationship between State, Market and Social Classes in the city of Colombo in the context of emerging housing market and citizens' access to livable house in the city and its suburbs. The people's recent residential patterns or segregation of the area, urban life styles, and class formation due to the new housing communities have received only scant attention. The commercialization of housing as a commodity by the private builders, whom the State has found impossible to exclude, due to its dwindling resources and infrastructure, has successfully manipulated the consumerist zeal of the consumers, both rich and poor alike, obsessed with status consciousness. The research findings of the study will help in formulating appropriate urban housing policies and the appropriate strategies to cater to the individual housing needs in future. The book will be of value to sociologists and other social scientists interested in urban development, politics and planning. The book will also be of interest to urban planners, city administrators, urban policy makers, builders and bankers.