Redefining urban hierarchy case study based on Sabaragamuwa province of Sri Lanka

Abstract

With the advent of the liberalized economic culture in 1977 in Sri Lanka, the need for urban development became unavoidable. In such a situation, the role of the urban centers became leverage for the blooming of the country‟s urban development and plays a vital role in the reduction of regional disparities. Development prospects in each urban center should be clearly understood to harvest benefits from these urban centers as a nuclear for national & regional development. For this purpose, capacity or sustain of these urban centers should be analyzed. Hierarchical order analysis of these urban centers manifest the actual potentials of these urban centers and more prominent for the national & regional development. The development potential of cities is subject to change over time. In order to gauge the level of development of cities, it is necessary to identify indicators and criteria that are relevant to the current development conditions, identify development trends using these criteria, and redefine the urban hierarchy according to these development trends. Proper analysis of each urban centers leads to gain maximum benefits from these urban centers. Up to now, there is no clear understanding of this hierarchy system in National & Regional physical plans in terms of attributes, factors, and methods used to determine the hierarchical order. So, there is a need to arise to explore the attributes, factors, methods used in the analysis of the hierarchy of urban centers. This study seeks to explore the indicators, factors, and methods used to analyze the hierarchical sequence of urban centers as articulated by urban development. Sabaragamuwa Province was chosen to define the urban hierarchy which is the theme of this research project. This study analyzes the characteristics and methodologies of the Sabaragamuwa Province of Sri Lanka to assess the potential of “Ratnapura and Kegalle Districts”.