Evolution of urban space through interventions, appropriations and adaptations: a study of the post-highway flyover built environments in Colombo

Abstract

The construction of flyovers is a commonly adopted measure to mitigate traffic congestion and improve vehicular movement in urban areas. While this intervention enhances traffic flow, its impacts extend beyond transportation, reshaping the city’s spatial structure and the lives of its inhabitants. In turn, the adaptation processes of the inhabitants reshape the built environments leading to a process of spatial transformation. This study explores the process of human adaptation in transforming urban built environments through space appropriation in four highway flyovers, namely, Dehiwala, Nugegoda, Slave Island, and Kohuwala, in Sri Lanka. Positioned on Gibson’s theory of Affordances and Lefebvre’s Space Appropriation triadic, and using a mixed-method, the evolution of the built environments in those localities is analyzed and discussed as a transactional process between authoritative interventions and the inhabitants’ space appropriations to adapt into new situations. The analysis is supported by visibility graph analysis and agent-based simulations. The findings reveal that these elevated infrastructures influence visual connectivity, integration, and movement patterns of the inhabitants. The ground observations also reveal that the inhabitants also adapt to new situations through a variety of responses, including both evading and appropriating the spaces formed by flyover structures to support their daily activities. Thus, the flyover constructions impact not only the traffic flows but also the overall built environments. This research contributes by making the architects, urban designers, engineers, and policymakers aware of the impact of infrastructure projects on shaping urban built environments through processes of decisions, interventions, and interactive behaviors of inhabitants.