A study of the spatial form of Kalutara town, Sri Lanka; as a unique historic process

Abstract

Contemporary urban planning practice often conceptualize of urban areas as static entities which could be planned towards certain end states, and devoid of social, economic, and political context, within which the spatial form is produced and reproduced. There have been many scholarly attempts to fill in this gap. The main argument put forward in this study is that the spatial form of an urban area is not a static neutral entity, as mostly seen in planning, but a dynamic process that keeps evolving with many forces emerging from both local and global context. In addition to deliberate planning efforts, the spatial form could be changed and organized by number of external and internal agents associated with it. In view of that, this study reformulated the already known story of the evolution of Kalutara town as a historic process, intending to explain spatial form as an evolving phenomenon.