Turning Sri Lanka's Urban Vision into Policy and Action

Sri Lanka's country vision is to
become a global hub between the East and the West and an
upper middle-income country by 2016. Sri Lanka's urban
vision, as defined in the government's development
policy framework is to develop a system of competitive,
environmentally sustainable, well-linked cities clustered in
five metro regions and nine metro cities and to provide
every family with affordable and adequate urban shelter by
2020. This policy note provides an initial assessment of Sri
Lanka's urban characteristics, outlining the challenges
ahead and broad policy directions for turning the urban
vision into action. The policy note has six main sections.
First section briefly outlines Sri Lanka's urban
characteristics today. Second section discusses the main
economic drivers of Sri Lanka's cities. Third section
presents the main themes of Sri Lanka's Urban Vision
(which includes the System of competitive cities vision and
the adequate and affordable urban shelter for all vision)
and discusses its economic rationale and viability given the
urban characteristics and economic drivers of the
country's cities. Fourth section outlines the main
challenges for achieving the Urban Vision, based on the
results of a diagnostic assessment carried out as an input
to the policy note. Fifth section discusses recent
government initiatives for implementing the urban vision,
and how they have helped tackle the challenges. And sixth
section offers broad policy directions and priority actions
to achieve the Urban Vision.