importing urban problems

The Arab World Geographer/Le Géographe du monde arabe Vol 8, No 1-2 (2005) 63–XX© 2005 by AWG – The Arab World Geographer, Toronto, Canada

Edward Said exposes how the U.S. stereotype ofthe Orient is constructed, hegemonized, and repro-duced. The cities that the scholars talk about, theadministrators administer, and the planners planare also perceptions. This article investigates theconstruction of the perception of low-incomeareas in Colombo, Sri Lanka, as problems by itsBritish colonial authorities in the 1910s–20s. Itundertakes the cultural “unpacking” of thiscontinuing colonial discourse.The article focuses on how the “concrete” livingenvironments that had existed for many decadeswere re-presented as problems and as objectiveknowledge. It addresses a conflict and negotiationbetween two European groups: the British andBritish colonial authorities in Colombo. I arguethat the tipping point of this transformation wasthe introduction of the Housing Ordinance of 1915and that the transformation has more to do withBritish town planning discourses, of which theordinance is a part, than with local conditions orindigenous or colonial viewpoints. However, thissocial production of urban problems must be seenwithin layers of power stemming from the impe-rial-colonial structures but mediated by regionalofficers who varied the practice of colonialismwhile maintaining the ideology of the “orientalistdiscourse.” It demonstrates that planners andauthorities do not have a privileged vantage pointto view the city, nor are their positions superior.

Key words: urban perceptions, colonial urbanism,representation, urban problems, orientalism, Said

Edward Saïd a montré comment le stéréotypeaméricain de l’Orient est construit, hégémonisé etreproduit. Les villes décrites par les scientifiques,gérées par les administrateurs, et aménagées parles urbanistes sont également des perceptions. Cet

article examine la construction de la perception dequartiers à bas revenus à Colombo au Sri Lanka,identifiés comme étant des problèmes par les auto-rités britanniques durant les années 1910 et 1920.Il entreprend de « défaire » ce discours colonialpersistant. Cet article se concentre sur la façon dont descadres « concrets » de vie qui existaient depuisdes décennies ont été re-présentés comme étantdes problèmes et des faits objectifs. Il discute leconflit et la négociation affectant deux groupeseuropéens: les Britanniques et les autorités colo-niales britanniques à Colombo. Nous montronsque le moment d’inflexion de cette transformationa été l’introduction du Décret sur le logement de1915 et que cette transformation est plus liée auxdiscours urbanistiques britanniques, duquel ledécret émane, qu’aux conditions locales ou auxpoints de vue autochtones ou coloniaux. Néan-moins, cette production sociale de problèmesurbains doit être saisie dans le cadre de l’existencede couches de pouvoir issues des structures impé-riales et coloniales mais mitigées par l’interven-tion d’agents régionaux qui ont diversifié lespratiques du colonialisme tout en maintenantl’idéologie du « discours orientaliste ». L’articledémontre que les aménageurs et les acteurspublics ne sont pas des observateurs privilégiés dela ville et que leurs positions ne sont pas supérieu-res.

Mots clés : perceptions urbaines, urbanismecolonial, représentation, problèmes urbains,orientalisme, Saïd

Making his most crucial contribution to ourknowledge—within the Western academy—Edward Said’s Orientalism (1978) exposeshow the modern U.S. stereotype of the Orient

Importing Problems: The Impact of a HousingOrdinance on Colombo, Sri Lanka

Nihal PereraDepartment of Urban Planning, College of Architecture and Planning, Ball State University,

Muncie, IN 47306-0315 U.S.A.

has been constructed, hegemonized, andreproduced. Like Orientalism, the city is alsoa perception. The cities that the scholars talkabout, the city administrators administer, andthe urban planners plan are all perceptions.This article investigates the construction anddevelopment of a particular perception ofColombo, the former capital of Sri Lanka(Ceylon until 1972), in the 1910s and 1920s.

Beginning in the early 16th century,Colombo had been the capital of colonialCeylon under the Portuguese, Dutch, andBritish for four centuries.i It was built andrestructured according to contemporaryEuropean urban norms and standards and wasseemingly well adjusted to the needs of thecolonial community in Colombo. Adapting toits environment, the colonial community alsoevolved with this colonial port city. Yet in thelate 1910s, quite abruptly, the British munici-pal authorities of Colombo and the newspa-pers published by members of the colonialcommunity and the Ceylonese elite reportedthat the city was infested by urban problemssuch as “bad housing” and “overcrowding.”This article examines this abrupt change inthe colonial perception of Colombo, itscauses, and its outcomes.

Like orientalism, which is a system ofrepresentations of the “Orient” that is “outthere,” the city that we talk about, functionwithin, and act upon is also a representationof a “physical” city that is “out there.” Yet arepresentation is neither an authentic copynor a natural depiction of the original city. InColombo, for example, the authoritiesviewed certain physical environments asproblems. Despite their apparent unity, thereare intellectual gaps between the representa-tion and the represented. The correlationbetween “ground conditions” and their depic-tion, the “problem,” is constructed throughinterpretations that employ intellectualframeworks to mediate between the two. Thegap between the represented and the repre-sentation is evident in Jonathan Barnett’scomplaint: “Unfortunately, architects andplanners have too often reacted to the evident

failure of their theories about cities not byrevising them but by condemning society, andby indulging escapist fantasies” (1982, 8).

Despite both direct challenges and grad-ual changes, the urban perception establishedin the 1910s is still the dominant way ofdefining and understanding cities in SriLanka. Fifty years after the nation achievedindependence in 1948, the cultural “unpack-ing” of this discourse has not yet been real-ized. Paying tribute to Said, and building onhis work, which culturally “unpacks” Orien-talism, this article does the same for thediscourse on Colombo’s urban problemsdeveloped in the 1910s–20s. I shall argue thatthe new perception was instigated by theintroduction of the Housing Ordinance of1915, largely by the discourse of which it ispart and less so by a reading of the localconditions from a Ceylonese or British colo-nial knowledge base.

The City as Perception

Understanding urban and built environmentsis central to both the scholarship of urbanstudies and the practice of urban planning andmanagement. I shall begin by brieflydiscussing the ways in which scholars andpractitioners employ representations tounderstand and explain these environments.In so doing, I shall develop an analyticalframework, approaching the issue of repre-sentation from the standpoint of a socialconstruction of urban perceptions and withinthe larger establishment of European culturalhegemony. I focus on the “discourse,” whichMichel Foucault (1972) defines as the systemof statements within which the world can beknown, but pay attention to “Said’s critique ofpower in Foucault as a captivating and mysti-fying category that allows him ‘to obliteratethe role of classes, the role of economics, therole of insurgency and rebellion.’” (Said1983, 243, as interpreted in Spivak 1988,180).

The “physical” city is accessed throughrepresentations. The administrators’, plan-

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The Arab World Geographer/Le Géographe du monde arabe 8, no 1-2 (2005)

ners’, and scholars’ cities are perceptionsconstructed through the definition and identi-fication of particular sets of social processesand structures as well as the territory onwhich these are believed to be concentratedas “urban” (see Perera 1996). Paul Hirst(2002) asserts that the contemporary city canonly be fully understood as a political institu-tion. As Seymour Mandelbaum argues, thecity is not a system but is principally made upof particular sets of processes that are classi-fied as urban (1985). Each observer makessense of the city by using intellectual frame-works of understanding that come with theirown “baggage,” including premises, assump-tions, biases, beliefs, interpretations, andnarratives. As she perceives and describes thecity, she creates it. The city thus differs fromone observer to the next, depending on thetime and place from which it is observed (thevantage point), the knowledge and the worldview (the framework) applied, and thelanguage (concepts) employed to build it.Despite its partiality and the social powerinvolved in it, representation is a necessity forthe analysis, planning, and management ofthe city. Representations are not false, butquite the opposite; they give tangibility andmateriality to the city that is “out there.” Thismediation enables the scholar and the practi-tioner to understand, examine, and modify it.What is false is the perception of “objectiv-ity” attached to certain representations, thusprivileging them over the others.

This study concerns the establishment ofhegemony for a particular perception of thecity. I have demonstrated elsewhere that therewere four principal stages of European colo-nialism in Ceylon: the military conquest, theestablishment of a colonial administration,economic incorporation, and the establish-ment of a European cultural hegemony(Perera 1999). The Europeans not only builtcities but also taught the “natives” their waysof understanding the city, although nevercompletely, establishing hegemony for theircultural perceptions and practices. Identify-ing certain environments in Colombo as

problems, scientifically defining and classify-ing these, bringing the perceptions thusdeveloped into circulation, and making theCeylonese accept these have all constructed asuperior position for these new perceptions.The questions are these: How did certainenvironments in Colombo in which low-income Ceylonese lived come to be seen asproblems? How did a view developed inBritain become superior to the former viewsof the municipal authorities in Colombo?

The investigation of the construction ofsuperiority for the colonial position requiresan understanding of the ideas, cultures, andhistories involved in it. From Said’s (1978)standpoint, this superiority cannot be seri-ously studied without accounting for theconfiguration of power. Orientalism is aprofound study of the construction of the“Other” as part of the imagination of theWest. Highlighting the effects of colonialismon the colonies, Anthony King (1980) arguesthat modern planning in post-colonial statesis a European product and colonialism wasthe vehicle of transfer. By building on thesearguments and conducting a detailed investi-gation, this article investigates the develop-ment of a new urban perception of Colomboby its colonial authorities in the early 20thcentury. The key variable in such analysis issocial power, that is, the capacity of somesubjects to intervene in a given situation, toimpose their will on others by the potential oractual use of violence, and to transform it(Giddens 1987; Castells 1989).

Highlighting the significance of colonialperception with respect to health hazards,Atkinson (1959), Little (1974), and King(1976) argue that this was the basis for deter-mining a great number of the colonial poli-cies. The central question is, Who representswhat for whom? Politics of representation isprecisely what connects this paper with Said’swork. Orientalism is a system of representa-tions framed by political forces that broughtthe Orient into Western learning andconsciousness. The Orient is constructed inrelation to the West, as its inferior “Other,”

Importing Problems: The Impact of a Housing Ordinance on Colombo, Sri Lanka 65


66 Nihal Perera


and exists for the West. Similarly, the city andits problems examined in this paper wereconstructed for and existed for the Britishmunicipal authorities in Ceylon.

Since these issues of representation werefirst raised by Said, scholars have not onlyexposed the Euro-American vantage pointthat most studies in colonial and post-colo-nial urbanism have adopted but alsoattempted to provide agency to the indige-nous peoples (see Yeoh 1996; Spivak 1999;King 1992; Perera 2002). Building on earlystudies that engage in social and culturalanalysis (e.g., Redfield and Singer 1954;McGee 1971), and approaching from a vari-ety of theoretical perspectives, scholars ofcolonial urbanism in the 1970s began toexpose the political and social powerinvolved in the historical construction ofsocial space and the connections betweencolonial policies and spatial subjectivity (seeKing 1990; Ross and Telkamp 1985; Saueres-sig-Schreuder 1986; Metcalf 1989; Rabinow1989; Mitchell 1991; Wright 1991; Al-Sayyad 1992; Crinson 1996; Home 1997;Yeoh 1996; Kusno 2000).

In this article, I focus on an environmentoccupied by low-income Ceylonese andproblematize its interpretation by providingspace for the views of the colonial authoritiesof Colombo by separating their views, devel-oped as part of the colonial third culture, fromthose “directly” imported from Britain. Bybuilding on Said’s work and problematizingthe singular notion of “Orientalism” and asingle subject, I will address a conflictbetween two European groups: the Britishand the colonial authorities in Colombo. Thisarticle focuses on the discourse and investi-gates the interpretation and representation ofphysical realities rather than checking objec-tive facts for their truthfulness and the expla-nation of empirical realities.

Necessary and Sufficient Conditions

Three principal factors were instrumental inthe production of these modern urban prob-

lems in Colombo. The first was the expansionof British colonial involvement in the cityfrom the original colonial base to a largermunicipal area in the 1860s–80s. The newmunicipal boundaries included areas thatwere not directly planned and developed bythe colonial authorities, notably those laterviewed as “problem areas.” Second was thecollection of census data, which began acrossthe empire in the 1870s. It provided numeri-cal data necessary for the identification andmeasurement of Colombo’s problems from aWestern scientific perspective. Third, theColombo Municipal Council, the authoritythat became concerned about these particularurban problems, was established in 1865.However, none of the above conditions wassufficient for the municipal authorities toidentify the problems they did in the late1910s. Let us first briefly investigate the threeconditions from the British colonial commu-nity’s standpoint.

In the early 19th century, Colomboconsisted of three principal zones: the fort,the Pettah (the area adjacent to the fort), andthe outer Pettah (Figure 1). Since the Britishconquest of the Dutch territories in Ceylon in1796, the fort had been the principal domainof the British colonial authorities. While thedescendants of the Portuguese and Dutchlived adjacent to it in the Pettah, theCeylonese lived further away, in and aroundthe Aluthkade (New Bazaar). There weregradual changes to this configuration, includ-ing the establishment of residences to thenorth of the city by a limited number of colo-nial officials and the intrusion of theCeylonese into the Pettah area. Yet the colo-nial regime mainly occupied the fort, and alarge part of Colombo and Ceylon lay outsidethe principal colonial domain until the middleof the century, particularly until the revolt of1848. It was in the late 19th century, particu-larly between the 1860s and the 1880s, thatthe size and scope of the city expandedbeyond the fort for its British authorities.

During these decades, Colombo wasrepositioned as the capital of the colony.



From the time it was established until thewhole island was subjugated to its authorityin 1815, colonial Colombo was contested by(indigenous) Lankan kingdoms located in theinterior of the island. Even after the Britishtakeover of the entire island, until the 1848revolt, Colombo was contested from outside,principally from the capital of the last king-dom, Kandy, located in the central highlands.This pattern of contestation of the colonialauthority changed with the failure of theuprising; the change was most evident in thetransformations of Colombo in the1860s–80s. By the end of the 1880s, theconflict had shifted into Colombo, making ita contested city representing the largerconflict between the rulers and the ruled(Perera 2002). Thus the larger aspect of thisrestructuring was mainly the politicalcentring of Colombo within the entire islandof Ceylon.

By the 1860s, the colonial authorities ofCeylon opted to upgrade the ports to takeadvantage of the new shipping, defined by the

more powerful and larger steam-poweredvessels introduced in the Eastern seas in the1840s. The Colonial Office selectedColombo, the port supported by the internalgeography of Ceylon, as the place to concen-trate port investments, particularly theconstruction an artificial harbour. This turnedColombo into a significant coaling stationand port of call nicknamed Clapham Junctionof the East,ii thus out-competing its closestrival, Galle, located in the south of the island.Galle’s advantage was based on the geogra-phy of the Indian Ocean and its winds, and itdominated shipping until the 1880s.3

Economically, the success of the planta-tions reproduced Colombo as the economicand political centre of Ceylon, but within thecontext of the world economy and theburgeoning import–export economy of thecolony. This is evident in the establishment ofa system of roads to and from Colombo, firstdeveloped for the purposes of subjugatingand administering the island, then supple-mented with railway lines connecting

Figure 1Colombo, Sri Lanka

Colombo to other places of import, particu-larly the plantations and the colonial hillstation of Nuwara Eliya. The port, whichoccupied the centre of this transportationnetwork, connecting the domestic networksto Britain and the rest of the world, was devel-oped into a crucial node in the imperial trans-portation network and the principal port ofCeylon. This process is thoroughly addressedin K. Dharmasena’s The Port of Colombo(1980).

Within Colombo, the most crucialchanges were the demolition in 1869 of thefortifications, which connected the fort to therest of the city, and the establishment of theColombo Municipal Council in 1865, provid-ing an administration for the expanded city.During the 1860s–80s, selected administra-tive and social institutions and functions ofthe colonial community were moved out ofthe fort area. The larger change included thebuilding of a colonial residential “suburb” inCinnamon Gardens, the creation of a seconddistrict for the British around it where thenew town hall was located, and the transfor-mation of the large open “field of fire” (theesplanade), the purpose of which was toprotect the colonist’s fort from its enemies,into a seafront promenade in 1859. Themunicipal area of the 1880s was about 10times as large as the fort area (Hulugalle1965), and within it, the former fort areabecame known to the citizens simply as“Fort.” The politically neutral term “Fort”conceals the colonial power relations in thefort area, naturalizing colonial perceptionswithin the Ceylonese community. In short,the period between the 1860s and the 1880swas marked by the expansion of British polit-ical and cultural space in Colombo and thedevelopment of more authority over the areasthat the municipality would later complainabout, for example, the Pettah, and St. Pauls(Kochchikade).

In a 1920 report, the chairman of theMunicipal Council, T. Reid (October1919–July 1924), highlights the new spatialstructure: “well-to-do people live in the

south, Cinnamon Gardens and beyond, …[and] the poor [are] overcrowded in the northand the center, where they live near their work… North and Central Colombo is tumblinginto the harbour on one side and into theswamps on the other” (in Municipality ofColombo 1923, 17). Like any map, this one isalso a politically charged perception thatestablished a way to view the city from thestandpoint of a spatial distribution of incomegroups (see Edney 1999; Jacobs 1993;Duncan 1990; Carter 1987). This was super-imposed on the extant understanding of thecity in terms of racial and ethnic divisions butgave prominence to economics.

Although the physical environmentsidentified by the municipality as problems inthe 1910s–20s may have existed before, theareas with such conditions would have lainoutside the British quarter prior to its expan-sion in the 1860s–80s. In 1920, Reid claimedthat “the Board [of Improvement] is dealingwith a comparatively poor city” (in Munici-pality of Colombo 1923, 16). This statementrefers to the low-income neighbourhoods thathad come under the municipality. Yet thisexpansion of Colombo did not make colonialmunicipal authorities find the urban problemsthey identified in the late 1910s.

Adding to the transformation of the colo-nial perception of Colombo, the (Western)“scientific” exploration of social problems,particularly their quantification, also tookroot during the late 19th century. Recordkeeping through quantified statistical regis-ters had been institutionalized in the BritishEmpire in the 1820s (Christopher 1988),which was a major step towards the catego-rization, classification, and objectification ofsubjects for such purposes (see Cohen 1987).In south Asia, beginning with estimates in theearly 19th century, census data collectionbecame a regular activity starting in 1871(Cohen 1987; Hulugalle 1965). This datacollection was conducted throughout theBritish Empire starting in 1891 (Christopher1988). Still, it was only in the second decadeof the 20th century that the Municipal Coun-

68 Nihal Perera


cil employed these figures to identify particu-lar urban and housing problems in Colombo.

One possibility is that the environmentsidentified as problems did not exist prior to1919. However, the evidence does notsupport this proposition. The overcrowdingof nine-tenths of the dwellings in the “poordistricts” could not happen overnight, unlessthere was some major shift in demographics.As the density of Colombo less than doubledbetween 1871 and 1921, these problemscannot have been not created by the increasein population, as was often implied. TheSessional Papers of 1920 refer to an “enor-mous and rapid rise in population recently. In1911 the population of Colombo city was211,274 and that of Wellawatta [later incor-porated] was 7,150.… the population of thepresent city is … nearly 300,000” (Munici-pality of Colombo 1920, 6). However, thecensus data do not substantiate this; theyshow a population of 244 163, with the riseof density for the same decade from 17 698people to 18 872 per square mile. Moreover,the 1898 report on overcrowding and theproposal for “Haussmanization” (Municipal-ity of Colombo 1923) indicate that theseenvironments existed before the turn of thecentury.iv Yet, as the above report indicates,there was a sense of urgency in 1920.

As most of the “overcrowded” neigh-bourhoods were in the vicinity of the port, theother possibility is that the expansion of theport and the unequal distribution of migra-tion, more concentrated in the port area,caused the transformation. Yet the major portexpansion took place with the expansion ofthe city in the 1860s–80s. The transformationof the port to accept steamers began in 1875,with the construction of a breakwater, andwas completed in 1883 (Dharmasena 1980).According to the census, St. Paul’s and theDockland Area (later Kochchikade) had thehighest densities. Yet Dharmasena (1980)observes that the remote parts of the citygrew as rapidly as the docklands until 1901,after which they grew more rapidly. Accord-ing to him, this trend is not surprising: As

both the political and economic capital of thecolony, the city drew a stream of migrantsfrom the rest of the island who had nothing todo with the port.

The shaping of the particular classconfiguration of Colombo described above byReid began with the European and Ceyloneseupper classes moving from north of Colombo(north of the railway tracks) to the south, tothe Kollupitiya-Bambalapitiya seafronts andCinnamon Gardens. By the 1860s, the mostfavoured location for the elite was Kollupi-tiya, and by the end of the century it wasCinnamon Gardens. With the development ofCircular Park (later Victoria Park), theColombo Museum in 1877, and the institu-tionalization of leisure through sports clubs,the focus of the elite and middle classes hadalready established this new centre by the1880s (Roberts, Rahim, and Colin-Thome1989). As the lower-income populationreplaced the elite and the middle classes andeven occupied their old houses, the north ofColombo, particularly the area around theport and railway workshops, was subject towhat was called “the ‘decline’ of the Pettahand of Colombo North” (Roberts et al. 1989,105). This change was facilitated by newlandlords who established working-classtenement gardens as a lucrative line of rentiercapitalism. Patrick Geddes (1921), whovisited Ceylon in 1920, oddly called these“garden villages.”

Garden tenement–type developmentproduced a higher number of dwellings peracre in Pettah, reducing the number of inhab-itants per dwelling (Dharmasena 1980). Thenumber of houses in the Docklands grewmore rapidly than the population, and theaverage household size declined from 5.6 to5.2 occupants (Dharmasena 1980). If this isthe condition identified by the municipalauthorities as a problem, it already existedfrom the 1880s. This was not a part of themunicipal discourse. The densities wereperhaps greater than those reported in censusdata because, among other reasons, the immi-grants who occupied the central areas of



Colombo, especially the Docklands andPettah, moved back and forth betweenColombo and home, while the dock workersdid night work, making it difficult to deter-mine occupancies. Yet there does not seem tohave any special way of knowing the sameinformation in the 1910s.

All of the above evidence points to theconclusion that the environments identifiedas problems gradually evolved from the1860s and were, most probably, substantiallypresent at the turn of the 20th century. Dhar-masena (1980) is confident that the city wasless healthy than the countryside by the turnof the century, but from when is uncertain.The evidence suggests that the spatial andstatistical insights provided by the expansionof the city and the census data, the knowl-edge, and the analytical frameworks thatexisted during that time were not sufficientfor municipal authorities to recognize theparticular living environments as the type ofproblems they identified in the 1910s.

The Crucial Factor

The crucial condition (the fourth factor), Ishall argue, is the exporting of urban legisla-tion from the metropole, the United King-dom, to the colonies, beginning in the early20th century. It was the exporting of theHousing Ordinance of 1915, which followedthe British Town Planning Act of 1909 (Hulu-galle 1965), that produced the extra vision forthe municipal authorities. Whatever theconditions that Colombo may have presented,the knowledge developed in the metropolemade the municipal authorities see thoseparticular conditions as problems. The newvision is evident in the language the authori-ties used: the problems of poverty, disease,overcrowding, bad housing, and the absenceof sanitation (Municipality of Colombo1923; Hulugalle 1965). The focus turned onthe low-income population, particularly thequality of their housing and living environ-ments, which were identified as problems.

Urban problems were not new to

Colombo, but they belonged to a differentgenre and discourse before the 1910s. Duringits early decades, the municipality discussedissues of public health and engineering andconcentrated on roads, water supply, andsanitary conditions as they affectedcommerce and administration. In 1903,Governor West Ridgeway stated,

The prosperity of Ceylon is dependent on theprosperity of Colombo, practically its sea port.…When I assumed charge of the administration ofthe colony in February, 1896, I realized the neces-sity of promptly dealing with the urgent questionsaffecting the welfare of Colombo, and … the defi-cient and precarious water supply and the graveinsanitary conditions of the city (Ridgeway 1903,96).

These remarks are more concerned witheconomic growth and municipal servicesthan with the unsanitary living conditions ofthe poor and the public good. They are moreabout the colonial port city of Colombo thanthe later-imported discourse on housing thepoor in industrial cities (in Britain).

Yet the discourse was not pure and exclu-sive. In 1906, the medical officer of health ofthe Colombo Municipality, Dr. WilliamMarshall Phillip, wrote regarding sanitationthat

the greatest bar to the effective carrying out ofthese works is, as I pointed out in my report forthe fourth quarter of 1903, the almost hopelessmanner in which the land has been covered withhouses, no regard having been paid to the sanitaryrequirements in the matter of light, ventilation,drainage, and access for scavenging purposes.The houses of poor classes, more particularly inthe central parts of the town, are crowded togetherin a way which is scarcely conceivable, many ofthem being imperfectly lighted and ventilated,sometimes not at all, while drainage scarcelyexists. All this … is the result of lack of legalcontrol over the erection of buildings (Municipal-ity of Colombo 1924, 25).

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This demonstrates that the city wasdivided, the poor were conglomerated nearthe port, and their housing environmentswere questionable. Parts of the statementresonate with the post-1915 discourse, indi-cating some continuity. As I shall demon-strate, there was no direct continuity, butsome of these ideas may later have beenincorporated into the new discourse.

The municipality was interested in deter-mining the level of “unhealthiness” amongthe poor. In view of using the death rate as acriterion, the Act of 1893 required theproduction of a death certificate beforeburial. Yet the statistics had no relationship tothe health conditions, as the Pettah districthad a disproportionately high number ofyoung adults (Dharmasena 1980, 137). Thiscorroborates Dharmasena’s observation that“Colombo does not appear to have been aremarkably unhealthy town; nor does thePettah stand out as an abnormally unhealthydistrict within it” (Dharmasena 1980, 136).

Public health was also discussed innewspapers, but more as a health issue than aplanning issue (see Ceylon Observer, 27August 1915, 1468). The suggestionsincluded proper vaccinations, administrationbudgets, charges for rubbish (CeylonObserver, 27 August 1915, 1491); properlight and ventilation were only brieflydiscussed. Other issues discussed in newspa-pers include town guards (Ceylon Observer, 2September 1915, 1495) and police (CeylonObserver, 10 September 1915, 1573), butthere were no editorials on housing issues.Even the editorial on the Colombo Munici-pality meeting of 3 November 1915 did notdiscuss the Housing Ordinance (CeylonObserver, 4 November 1915).

Overcrowding was an issue, but the typeof concern was different. It was somethingthat the municipality was trying to determine.In 1901, for the first time, a systematicinspection of all buildings that were likely tobe overcrowded was carried out by healthinspectors. Yet there were no specific criteriafor determining overcrowding, nor was there

a legal definition of this term. As the size ofthe dwellings varied, the inspectors weregiven the authority to decide which wereovercrowded. Although notices were issuedto people ordering their departure from thosebuildings that were believed to be “over-crowded,” the conditions (“overcrowding”)continued (Dharmasena 1980).

Thus, the urban problems discussedbetween 1865 and 1915 had some similaritiesto the problems that would be identified after1915. The discussion of overcrowding andHaussmanization indicates that problemssomewhat similar to those identified later hadexisted at the turn of the century. Despitesome exceptions, such as the 1898 report, theprincipal concerns, goals, and objectives ofthe municipality were clearly different before1915, and the focus was on the overall city,the economy, commerce, health issues, andengineering as a means to solve problems.The post-1915 discourse thus represents aleap in thinking that was not developed inCeylon.

New Discourse, New Perception

The discourse took a sharp turn with theintroduction of the Housing Ordinance, andthe perception of the city’s problems radicallychanged for its leaders. In place ofcommerce, engineering, colonial community,and transportation, the focus shifted to theunsanitary housing conditions of the urbanpoor, which—it was believed—deserved theintervention of the local government. Theurban poor were thus transformed into theOther, the opposite of those who lived inhealthy environments; they should be helpedand disciplined, bringing the city to order.Within an year of the passing of the HousingOrdinance, the Kochchikade area wasdeclared unsanitary. In certain respects, thisclassification and its remedy are similar tocrime and punishment. This new positiontaken by the city leaders amounts to an inven-tion (or creation) of urban and housing prob-lems. The ordinance had paved the way for



the authorities to view the low-income settle-ments in Kochchikade as illegal and toassume the responsibility to intervene in thesituation. This new knowledge—the frame-work provided by the ordinance—made theauthorities see old conditions as new urbanand housing problems.

The language resonates very much whatthe authorities in Manchester and Leeds haddiscovered half a century earlier in their owncities. Most significantly, it was to the Boardof Improvement, which had been created toimplement the Housing Ordinance, that theChairman of the Colombo Municipal Councilbegan reporting these problems in 1919, justthree years after the enactment of the ordi-nance. In a report in 1922, he wrote that nine-tenths of the dwellings in what wereidentified as “poor districts” are “over-crowded.” In 1926, the Director of Statistics,L.J.B. Turner, published a “census ofpoverty” in the city. He collected data from394 family budgets, addressing 1 313persons, and concluded that in “congestedareas” 30 % of the families lived below the“poverty line.” The poorest in Colombo spent30 % of their income (15 to 20 Rupees permonth) on housing, and the average numberof persons to a room was 3.8. The “over-crowding” was on the same scale as that ofBombay and much greater than that ofLondon (Municipality of Colombo 1926).

The Administration Report of 1916addressed the Kochchikade area directly:

It is not only extremely overcrowded and congested, but

it is also covered with badly constructed buildings

which are generally in a dilapidated condition. This

quarter is one of the plague-infected areas. Running

through the middle portion of the block, there is an

extremely foul open drain which receives sewage from

the tenement latrines and cattlesheds and is a source of

constant complaint (“Town Planning” 1919, 2; my

emphasis).

In comparison to pre-1915 discourses,the above statement represents a qualitativechange in the municipality’s perception of the

city within a very short period: race-basedevaluations were overlaid with a class-basedunderstanding of Colombo. The emphasis onthe poor is closer to the discourses in Britainthan to previous discourses on Colombo. Theproblems were a clear invention, producedthrough the classification and categorizationof certain environments in Colombo.v This isquite evident in the context of the later hous-ing discourses of the 1960s and 1970s, inwhich housing experts such as John Turnerhighlight that self-building by poor inhabi-tants of Third World cities is not a problembut a solution to the lack of affordable hous-ing. Although the condition discussed by themunicipal authorities may have existed, theproblem did not; it is a re-presentation, aninterpretation of certain conditions via aparticular discourse. It is a reconfiguration ofknowledge, map, and control based on a newparadigm, developed in England and repre-sented in the Housing Ordinance.

The premise necessary for this exportingis that the world is objectively knowable, andthe knowledge so obtained is generalizableand exportable (see Apffel-Marglin 1996).This generalizable knowledge was viewed assuperior to the local knowledge of the colo-nial authorities in Colombo, which waslocally produced and not generalizable.According to Stephen Marglin, the knowl-edge system of management in the West ischaracterized

not only by impersonality, by its insistence onlogical deduction from self-evident axioms as theonly basis of knowledge, but also by its emphasison analysis, its claim that knowledge must bearticulate in order to exist, its pretense to univer-sality, its cerebral nature, its orientation to theoryand empirical verification of theory, and its oddmixture of egalitarianism within knowledgecommunity and hierarchical superiority vis-a-visoutsiders (Marglin 1990, 24).

The information acquired by the Britishdid not represent any empirically knowntruths. Instead, it constituted contested

72 Nihal Perera


knowledge of a socially constructed reality. Itis not simply that history occurred; theBritish constructed this urban perception andtransformed the city into a well-defined,knowable geographical entity that can befully understood through its classificationsystem. This incidence of interruption in thediscourse, the process of authorities identify-ing problems in Colombo, highlights thedisplacement of the extant concept of “prob-lem.” For its perceiver, as Matthew Edney(1999) argues with respect to India, the newknowledge reduced Colombo to a rigidlycoherent, geometrically accurate, anduniformly precise rational space withinwhich a systematic archive of knowledgeabout Colombo and its people could beconstructed.

This representation was characterized inthe interests of the ruling power more thanthose of the local conditions. By emphasizingthe moral and intellectual superiority ofWestern culture, Europeans were able tojustify the violent project of imperialistexpansion as a civilizing mission whereby theBritish believed they were rescuing the poor.As Said has demonstrated in Orientalism(1978), the colonial will to know and under-stand the non-Western world is inseparablefrom the will to exercise power over thatworld. The production of these problemsdefined and established an epistemologicalspace and a discourse (an “Orientalism”) thattransformed the conditions in Colombo intoobjects with European knowledge.vi Theconditions thus acquired a specific referentfor the English as a problem.

This process produced the view that low-income neighbourhoods such asKochchikade are abnormal, establishing theneed to do something about them. Moreover,it transformed elite housing into a model thateveryone should follow. Although the Britishdid not act directly on the indigenous popula-tion, by displacing the extant knowledge ofproblems, replacing the process of identify-ing problems, and thus breaching the extantsystem of representation, they caused what

Gayatri Spivak calls epistemic violence(1988, 1990; see also Morton 2003). TariqBanuri argues that the intellectual dominanceof the “Western model” derives not from itsinherent and unequivocal superiority but,rather, from the political dominance of thosewho believe in its superiority and who havebeen able to devote attention and resources tolegitimizing modernization as Westerniza-tion (Banuri 1990). As the municipality’sresponses suggest, the purpose of making theenvironments of the poor visible was to makethem invisible, a problem to be solved. Thisopened up two principal options to transformthese housing districts: either to eradicatethem or to make them “normal,” that is, simi-lar to the housing of the middle classes. In the1920s, therefore, Kochchikade was selectedfor an Improvement Scheme.

The Agency of Colonial Officers in theOrient

Newspapers in Colombo also got involved inthe debate from 1915, publishing not onlyreports but also editorials on housing andtown improvement issues. The publication ofthe Report of the Select Committee on theHousing and Town Improvement Bill in theBritish-owned Ceylon Observer of 7 October1915, marks the beginning of that newspa-per’s long engagement with these issues. Inthis way, the ordinance drew the attention ofkey stakeholders in the city—those belongingto the then growth coalition in Colombo (seeLogan and Molotch 1987)—to the problem oflow-income neighbourhoods. The ordinancealso defined the contours of the discourse.The hegemony this discourse achieved hascontinued into the 21st century.

The incompatibility between the ordi-nance and the extant institutional and legalframeworks and discourses within which itwas expected to take effect soon becameevident. Prior to its enactment, a committeeappointed by the municipality made certainamendments to the original bill. It adaptedselected details to “the circumstances to



which these principles will be applied”(“Housing and Town Improvement Bill”1915, 1743). With respect to overcrowding,the committee reduced the enforced stan-dards:

We have considered very carefully the question ofthe standard for overcrowding. The Medical Offi-cer of Health of the Colombo Municipalityinformed us that the standard which is at presentenforced by the Police Magistrate is that of 400cubic feet per adult, and strongly pressed us togive this standard statutory force. We decided,however, after careful consideration to adopt thestandard of 360 cubic feet per adult, which isslightly in excess of the standard adopted in theStraits Settlements where conditions of lifeapproximate to those of Ceylon (“Housing andTown Improvement Bill” 1915, 1744).

Despite the changes it made, thecommittee was more faithful to the mainprinciples and standards underlying the bill,which followed British planning discourses.With respect to minimum volumes of habit-able rooms, despite the adjustments, thecommittee leaned more towards importedstandards than to those already being prac-tised in Colombo, particularly the standardsset by the Medical Officer of Health of theColombo Municipal Council. It also requiredthat every inhabited room receive a minimumamount of light (“Housing and TownImprovement Bill” 1915). Despite thechanges, the committee’s intention was tostrengthen the main principles of the bill.Hence, disregarding the municipality’s owncomplaints about overcrowding, the commit-tee reduced the standards already beingenforced by the municipality. The changesincluded the insertion of “inhabited room,”“habitable room,” and “public building,” butthese were based on the definitions in theLondon Building Act, and the definition of“owner” was taken from the Municipal Coun-cils Ordinance, No. 6 of 1910, of the UnitedKingdom (“Housing and Town ImprovementBill” 1915). Despite some terms, therefore,

there is very little direct continuity from theextant discourses to those in use after 1915.

Soon the authorities and the newspapersbegan observing the mismatches between theHousing Ordinance and local environmentsin Colombo. By 1920, the municipalitycomplained that “the chief immediate causeof the shortage, especially in the better classof houses, is the Ordinance No. 19 of 1915.…[Its] passing … stopped the erection of insan-itary roads, buildings, &c., but it also tendedto stop the building operations so greatlyneeded” (Municipality of Colombo 1920, 6).From 1916 to 1919, building applicationswere low and 262 were rejected.

One option was to amend the ordinanceto suit the local conditions. In a report in1920, the Chairman of the Board of Improve-ments observes that the ordinance, “with itsnumerous amendments, is not an effectiveinstrument. It needs revision, if not re-model-ing. Applying its provisions to the plan ofaction set above [in the report of 1920], theBoard will reach a legal impasse at everyhand’s turn as it and the Municipal Councilalready know by experience” (Municipalityof Colombo 1923, 18).

Rather than adapting the ordinance,however, the municipality began amendingthe infrastructure (the context) to suit it. Itbegan borrowing and adapting other laws,such as the Land Acquisition Ordinance, tofulfil the Housing Ordinance’s “planning”goals:

The Kochchikade Slum Scheme progressed to theextent that a competition for the lay-out was heldand a design was selected. By this time, however,the Council had [found that] … the Town Improve-ment Ordinance dealing with schemes … [is]unworkable. It, therefore, decided to proceed underthe Land Acquisition Ordinance. Although this hadbeen done with great success by the Kandy Munic-ipal Council, it was indicated that there weredoubts as to the legality of such undertaking. Theproject, therefore, awaits an amendment of the law(Municipality of Colombo 1926, 9).

74 Nihal Perera


In this sense, the ordinanceprevailed and directed the urban perception ina new direction. Instead of theorizing the situ-ation, as the authorities had done prior to1915, a “theory” was applied to a situation.As King (1976) demonstrates, the colonialcommunity has its own third culture, whichresults from the transformation of metropoli-tan cultural institutions as they come intocontact with the culture of the indigenoussociety. Within this colonial third culture, thecolonial administrators had been attemptingto develop their own perceptions of urbanproblems. But the identification of theseparticular urban problems and the develop-ment of the larger urban perception tookplace in the late 1910s, and this change wasdirectly instigated by the Housing Ordinance.Nonetheless, the municipality soon realizedthe significance of supplying houses ratherthan following a negative policy of imposinglegal controls on the construction of what theordinance considered “insanitary dwellings.”It became aware that, in the short run, badhouses are better than no houses—the resultof the controls put into effect by the ordi-nance. The municipality began appealing tolarge-scale employers of labourers to followthe example of plantations in providing hous-ing for their own labour force. The publicsector responded favourably and also beganseveral housing schemes (Dharmasena1980). In this case, the municipality wascompelled to respond to the situation createdby the ordinance.

Conclusions

Problematizing the duality of colonizer/colo-nized, this article has exposed different levelsof power and discourses that operated withinimperial-colonial structures of the BritishEmpire, highlighting the spaces of the metro-pole, the colonial officers, and the indigenouspopulation and the interaction among these.Despite the agency that each group had,within the unequal power structure of theEmpire, British colonial perceptions in the

colony were periodically renewed bydiscourses developed in the metropole. In thisexample, such renewal was not actively andintentionally carried out by any imperialauthority but, rather, was developed throughepistemic negotiations that were stronglyinfluenced by the imperial structures then inplace. The municipality was also concernedabout what it saw as problems in the city—mainly related to roads, water supply, andsanitary conditions—in its own way; theintroduction of the Housing Ordinance of1915, however, drew local officials’ attentionto the living environments of the poor, butframed these as a problem calling for officialintervention. The Housing Ordinance was notsimply an isolated document, therefore, butcarried with it a different perception of thecity and a larger discourse through which themunicipal authorities began to see inColombo what their British counterparts sawin English cities. The changes brought aboutin Colombo are evident in the municipalauthorities’ realization that the enforcementof ordinance may have created a new prob-lem: it reduced construction of houses inColombo, making the authorities think thatbad housing might be better than no housing.

Nonetheless, as the narrative reveals,there were no authentic views operating inde-pendent of one another, nor were thediscourses always hierarchical and top-downin direction; rather, they were negotiated,hybrid, and there were continuities thatblurred lines between categories. The ordi-nance provided the colonial community andauthorities with a capitalist middle-classperception of the city developed in Britain,which, in the colony, was overlaid on racialand ethnic discourses but gave primacy to theclass discourse. This discourse absorbed themunicipal authorities and various experts,turning them into objects within the narra-tive. It renewed colonialism, as it invigoratedthe British authority’s power over bothindigenous and British colonial communitiesin Colombo. Most crucially, this impositionof a British perception of the colony violated



the epistemic structure of the locals, both thecolonial administrators and the Ceylonese.

This study also reveals a periodization.The 1860s–80s were a turning point in thecolonial perception of Colombo, as well as inthe urban development of this city.Colombo’s authority was accepted by itscontestants, and its authorities expanded andrestructured it as the capital. The next turningpoint was 1915–21, when a new urbanperception based on the housing ordinancewas developed and hegemonized. This endedthe urban discourses of the first period of theColombo Municipal Council, from1865–1915.

Most crucially, this study has highlightedthe incongruence between representationsand represented in urban discourses and thesignificant role played by interpretations inconnecting these. It has also demonstratedthat what the planners plan and the authoritiesauthorize is a perception built upon interpre-tations that employ certain frameworks thatare not politically neutral. Besides beinginformed by a professional framework, theplanners and authorities do not have a privi-leged vantage point to view the city, nor istheir position superior. Hence, the study ofthe social production of urban perceptions iscentral to understanding urban managementand urban planning. The particular socialproduction discussed in this paper must beseen within layers of power stemming fromthe central administrative structure of colo-nialism but mediated by regional officerswho vary the practice of colonialism whilemaintaining the ideology of the “Orientalistdiscourse.”

AcknowledgementI wish to thank Wes Janz, Arijit Sen, GardnerSmith, and the anonymous reviewers for theirvaluable comments on the manuscript.

Notes1 For the broader context of this argument,

see Perera (1999).2 Clapham Junction was a major railway

intersection in south London, and“Clapham Junction” serves a similarrhetorical function as “Grand CentralStation” in U.S. vernacular.

3 In 1860s and 1870s, more shipping usedGalle than Colombo (Dharmasena1980).

4 Haussmanization was a large-scaleurban renewal program carried out inParis under Baron Haussman in the mid-19th century.

5 For a similar discussion on the inventionof places through naming, see Carter(1987).

6 See Cohen (1996).

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