An Examination of plural city with layered singularities and urban design: case of Arugambay city, Sri Lanka

Abstract

An increasing urban population, a new-fangled social dynamism, and fast-changing urban settings, composed of a lack of urban planning, lead to intensifying paradoxes that impend to connect urban prosperity, cohesion, and sustainability. All this creates a necessity for rethinking the perspective on the city and its development. By investigating urban design concepts of the plural city in literature, the research article provides new ways of understanding and reading the city. Urban designers describe the plural qualities of an inclusive city from the perspective of urban design: a city as a plurality of unique places and subjectivities in time as the plural city. Considering the case study methodology, this research critically discussed and assessed the case of Arugambay City in the Ampara District, a well-known tourism destination, as a plural city due to its long-lasting diversity and heterogeneity in both social tissue and urban matrix. As a result, able to define the components, dealings, and plurality of interpretations within the plural city on a multiscale. Based on user experience gained through public art and public space interventions, it could be realized that public art strategies can be used as a technique and tool to pledge spatial transformations and provide diverse ways of experiencing public space.