ABSTRACT
This chapter offers some theories about how to create safer cities in post-war countries. It presents research on the losses and gains of two relocated urban Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) communities in post-war Sri Lanka: Colombo, the national capital, and Jaffna, the capital of the country's northern province. Urban IDPs face a wide range of losses, such as chronic impoverishment, even long after they have been resettled. Many people have also been forced to move due to urban development projects, such as when the government evacuated a number of shantytowns and slum communities. Between 2010 and 2014, Sri Lanka's Urban Development Authority initiated a plan to evacuate some 68,000 families out of these slum communities, and into high-rise buildings in and around Colombo. The older Sri Lankan population is quite conservative, and many felt that even standard modern tools, such as mobile phones and internet access, tend to corrupt the young generation.
