Responsive social spaces in Sri Lankan urban environment : an examination of physical and social determinants and their impact in modifying social spaces in an urban context

Abstract

The Sri Lankan urban environment contains different types of public social spaces with varying size, functions or activity pattern. Obviously these spaces enliven the urban environment and the degree of liveliness depends on determinant factors, which could be identified as social and physical. These factors are of vital importance as they enable to strengthen the character of a place to be a responsive urban space." Responsive urban space" is considered as a place where the built environment that provides its users with an essentially democratic setting which enriches their opportunities by maximizing the degree of choice available to them. This dissertation attempts to generate some conceptual insights of contributory physical and social determinant factors of social spaces and how best they can be utilized to modify or design a social space and the immediate context. In the course of examining the problem, the writer looks at three different types of social spaces in Sri Lankan urban environment namely, religious oriented, recreational oriented and transport - commercial - recreational oriented social spaces at Kandy, Colombo and Nuwara Eliya respectively. The work that lies behind this study was done by observation of sites, photographic study, study on historic literature and questionnaire aimed at users of the social space. The analysis revealed that the goals must be balanced and merged with economic, contextual and user preferences so as to modify the social space and immediate built form. The writer intends that the dissertation would help the students in the field, town planners, architects etc. as a guide line to design buildings in the proximity of urban social spaces as it is believed that shaping the built form will in turn shape the behavior pattern of the users.