People’s Perception of Revitalized Public Spaces: The Case of Independence Square, Colombo, Sri Lanka

Abstract

The increasing tendency of enhancing the quality of public spaces in developing countries, for example by promoting strong visual identity, is a crucial government polity instrument in economic and urban revitalization, while generating threats against the inclusive’ qualities of these public spaces. Concerning that matter this study was designed to fulfill two main objectives: Identify the different community perceptions regarding current public space revitalization actions that are going on in Colombo and to find out how it vary with different social levels in order to discover the social inclusive! exclusive nature of those particular projects selecting Independence Square as the case study. This paper concludes with the following results: The revitalization activities leads to further shrink the limited city space that has been used by the marginal groups while diminishing the Inclusive’ character of the public space and the city. Further, it challenges several current government polity assumptions concerning public space and give clues for urban planners and polity makers about the need of broad definition to the term “community” recognizing the so called marginal or problem groups are also a part of the community