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Recent Posts
- Dirty Business: Reading modernity in Colombo’s fish markets
- Financing Conservation: Six Mechanisms Sri Lanka Should Know About
- Understanding Power Asymmetries in Platform-based Gig Work
- A New Project on Innovative Financing for Sustainable Marine Conservation in Sri Lanka
- Borrowing To Eat: The Impact of Sri Lanka’s Economic Crisis on Colombo’s Working Class Poor
Iromi Perera

December 1, 2021
Budget Makers for the Country Must Listen to the Budget Makers of the Home
Since the first lockdown in March 2020, most conversations we have had with working class poor communities in Colombo have been dominated by one topic – budgets and listening to families talk about how they prioritise their expenditure based on their needs and their income. How do we take the everyday struggles of people to get by or get the job done, only to be faced with a state institution also struggling for resources and turn it into an experience where people’s needs can be met with well-funded and equipped institutions?
Tags: Colombo Urban Lab

October 20, 2021
Housing in a Pandemic: Need for New Methods of Engagement
One of the biggest lessons from this COVID period has been that our house is the safest place to be in and that our surroundings, even the ability to see trees or grow something in a small garden, for a woman to go out for a walk feeling safe or for children to play freely are all things that everyone should be entitled to. In our advocacy and the way we frame our arguments we have to find ways to use data and various intersections to make our points clear, even in a court room. Some things can’t be quantified nor are they tangible – so how do we translate that into a language that policy makers can understand?
Tags: Colombo Urban Lab

August 14, 2021
Involuntary Resettlement in Sri Lanka – Urgent Need for Reform
Dispossession can have generational impacts on communities if their relocation process is not done in a proper way. The loss of their home and land that they have invested in, loss of livelihood and community and their entire of way of life is a massive upheaval. The words involuntary resettlement alone addresses that the act is not a fair one or a just one to begin with, and we need to ensure that communities are not left worse off post relocation.
Tags: Colombo Urban Lab