ABSTRACT
When reading through the literature available on the phenomenon of gated communities located in a multiplicity of global centres, the need for an academic engagement with the comparable Sri Lankan housing development sector becomes a palpable one. Such an engagement has not taken place thus far in the Sri Lankan context due to two serious absences in the local intellectual environment. These are the absence of a theoretically sophisticated interest in a sociological analysis of the city, urban space and urbanity, and the non-existence of an intellectually robust local tradition in critical architecture. This article develops a reading of gated communities in the local context and attempts to engage with the aesthetic, architectural and developmentalist connotations of this specific kind of housing development that has emerged in Colombo and the suburbs over the last 15 years. Due to the absences noted above, ‘gated community’ as a specific term is absent from both popular as well as academic discourses dealing with housing in Sri Lanka. In this context, all housing developments, including gated communities, are identified using generic terms such as ‘housing complex’ without any specific reference to their internal characteristics or other identificatory markers. Despite the liminality of gated communities as a terminological entity in local discourses on housing, their physical presence can be felt quite significantly across city and suburban landscapes.
