Nihal's main research interest is in the social production of space. His work focuses on lived spaces; how ordinary people negotiate/transform absolute and abstract spaces and produce (lived) spaces for their daily activities and cultural practices.
The two-time Fulbright Scholar (China and Myanmar) was Senior Research Fellow at the National University of Singapore. He received three Fulbright-Hays awards and was nominated for Heiskell and Malone awards. Besides the USA, Nihal has taught in China, Germany, India, Italy, Myanmar, Sri Lanka and Thailand. His publications include People's Spaces; Transforming Asian Cities (co-eds); Decolonizing Ceylon; Importing planning problems; the Planner’s City; Contesting Modernities in Chandigarh; and Feminizing the City.
Wanathamulla cannot be fully captured. It is a classic subaltern site. The academics, politicians... more Wanathamulla cannot be fully captured. It is a classic subaltern site. The academics, politicians, and professionals do not have the capacity to capture the community, nor have the members (with some exceptions) been allowed to enjoy citizenship. The knowledge employed by the politicians and the UDA has not given them the ability to know Wanathamulla (or similar neighbourhoods). They have missed the local realities. As planners have lost their instincts and empathy in their training, the politicians rationalise their action, rather than adopting rationality. ... What they have produced is a mess at best. The local processes, from a formal standpoint, are incomplete, conflicting, and changing at best. As Srivastava’s (2015) Gurgaon, Wanathamulla manifests entangled processes of intimacies, antagonisms, dreams, identities, boundaries, and their porousness. ... The local rationality has defied the outsiders, exposing their social, spatial, and economic illiteracy. .... It is the high-rises built by the state that have become concentrations of poverty, vice, and drugs and flat-dwellers are the ones who need help. The politicians, professionals, and authorities opted to act without understanding but asserting, using their positional superiority, the notion that they can be turned into middle-class people by providing flats which makes them extremely powerful. In practice, the relocated people are forced to respond to middle-class demands of paying bills but without middle-class incomes and capabilities. This attempt to create consumers out of producers and shift their focus from livelihood to consumption has created only an assetless population trying to survive without social capital and economic competence, with very little agency. This is a process of causing “slum” conditions. ... This is slow violence; characterised by processes of gradual disempowerment of somewhat “law abiding outlaws” who are gradually pushed into chronic poverty. The hardest impediment for those who strive is the stigma. Through their projects, the authorities and the UDA project a negative image of Wanathamulla people as slum-dwellers and try to control them using brutal strategies such as eviction of self-builders and, in high-rises, disconnecting the water supply to select flats when they fail to pay the rent. The law enforcement is prevented by the stereotyping of the whole neighb3ourhood as “criminal”. This institutionalisation of stigma and second-class citizenship is much harder for the people of Wanathamulla to overcome. The result is the existence of an entrepreneurial community that is neither able to materialise the potential benefits of the resourceful. locale nor to contribute to the development of the neighbourhood and the city at large. Yet Wanathamulla people are resilient, although at a high social and monetary cost. The people’s processes, intermittently supported by external actors such as Gunasinghe, NM, and Premadasa, have not only survived but also supported the people dumped in the high-rises to develop community. Their responses to the stigma are highly effective. Wanathamulla people have not simply built homes for themselves but have established and reproduced a community, creating jobs, and livelihoods for themselves.
shape. For scholars of urbanism, an urban unit is a system that is defined as a town or a city, a... more shape. For scholars of urbanism, an urban unit is a system that is defined as a town or a city, and it is not a system that is discovered. Within this "subjectivity" -and well informed scholarship- the researcher is bound to find what s/he is looking for. When the scholars look for global cities or globalization, they are most likely to find them. What planners plan is also a perception. The particular perception of the city that is adopted by the planner provides the foundation for planning. What I am exploring are new trends in planning in Asia's cities that would provide an opening for planners in Asia to go beyond the present-day Euro-centric planning systems, empowering them to develop plans that are more related to the people and the environment of the city.
Edward Said exposes how the U.S. stereotype of the Orient is constructed, hegemonized, and reprod... more Edward Said exposes how the U.S. stereotype of the Orient is constructed, hegemonized, and reproduced. The cities that the scholars talk about, the administrators administer, and the planners plan are also perceptions. This article investigates the construction of the perception of low-income areas in Colombo, Sri Lanka, as problems by its British colonial authorities in the 1910s–20s. It undertakes the cultural “unpacking” of this continuing colonial discourse. The article focuses on how the “concrete” living environments that had existed for many decades were re-presented as problems and as objective knowledge. It addresses a conflict and negotiation between two European groups: the British and British colonial authorities in Colombo. I argue that the tipping point of this transformation was the introduction of the Housing Ordinance of 1915 and that the transformation has more to do with British town planning discourses, of which the ordinance is a part, than with local conditions or indigenous or colonial viewpoints. However, this social production of urban problems must be seen within layers of power stemming from the imperial-colonial structures but mediated by regional officers who varied the practice of colonialism while maintaining the ideology of the “orientalist discourse.” It demonstrates that planners and authorities do not have a privileged vantage point to view the city, nor are their positions superior.
Cities People Places : An International Journal on Urban Environments, 2021
The number of people who are affected by urbanization has radically increased. However, the econo... more The number of people who are affected by urbanization has radically increased. However, the economic boom over the past decades has escalated the environmental problems. Among other solutions, environmentalists have proposed vertical greening, which refers to allowing vegetation to grow on the vertical surface of a building. With other sustainability-oriented strategies, vertical greening is thought to help resolve current environmental issues, as well as current health issues. It may prevent the cities from being unbearable during locked downs which impacts human’s mental health due to social distancing measures. Green walls are an option for cities for people to engage with Nature. Known for their pleasantness to the senses and earthy qualities, they boost human health and improve air quality. Plants can thrive on walls, making it a popular trend globally and also welcomes antidotes to stress and isolation. Plants which contain day-to-day supply of nutrition and anti-germ characte...
Wanathamulla cannot be fully captured. It is a classic subaltern site. The academics, politicians... more Wanathamulla cannot be fully captured. It is a classic subaltern site. The academics, politicians, and professionals do not have the capacity to capture the community, nor have the members (with some exceptions) been allowed to enjoy citizenship. The knowledge employed by the politicians and the UDA has not given them the ability to know Wanathamulla (or similar neighbourhoods). They have missed the local realities. As planners have lost their instincts and empathy in their training, the politicians rationalise their action, rather than adopting rationality. ... What they have produced is a mess at best. The local processes, from a formal standpoint, are incomplete, conflicting, and changing at best. As Srivastava’s (2015) Gurgaon, Wanathamulla manifests entangled processes of intimacies, antagonisms, dreams, identities, boundaries, and their porousness. ... The local rationality has defied the outsiders, exposing their social, spatial, and economic illiteracy. .... It is the high-rises built by the state that have become concentrations of poverty, vice, and drugs and flat-dwellers are the ones who need help. The politicians, professionals, and authorities opted to act without understanding but asserting, using their positional superiority, the notion that they can be turned into middle-class people by providing flats which makes them extremely powerful. In practice, the relocated people are forced to respond to middle-class demands of paying bills but without middle-class incomes and capabilities. This attempt to create consumers out of producers and shift their focus from livelihood to consumption has created only an assetless population trying to survive without social capital and economic competence, with very little agency. This is a process of causing “slum” conditions. ... This is slow violence; characterised by processes of gradual disempowerment of somewhat “law abiding outlaws” who are gradually pushed into chronic poverty. The hardest impediment for those who strive is the stigma. Through their projects, the authorities and the UDA project a negative image of Wanathamulla people as slum-dwellers and try to control them using brutal strategies such as eviction of self-builders and, in high-rises, disconnecting the water supply to select flats when they fail to pay the rent. The law enforcement is prevented by the stereotyping of the whole neighb3ourhood as “criminal”. This institutionalisation of stigma and second-class citizenship is much harder for the people of Wanathamulla to overcome. The result is the existence of an entrepreneurial community that is neither able to materialise the potential benefits of the resourceful. locale nor to contribute to the development of the neighbourhood and the city at large. Yet Wanathamulla people are resilient, although at a high social and monetary cost. The people’s processes, intermittently supported by external actors such as Gunasinghe, NM, and Premadasa, have not only survived but also supported the people dumped in the high-rises to develop community. Their responses to the stigma are highly effective. Wanathamulla people have not simply built homes for themselves but have established and reproduced a community, creating jobs, and livelihoods for themselves.
shape. For scholars of urbanism, an urban unit is a system that is defined as a town or a city, a... more shape. For scholars of urbanism, an urban unit is a system that is defined as a town or a city, and it is not a system that is discovered. Within this "subjectivity" -and well informed scholarship- the researcher is bound to find what s/he is looking for. When the scholars look for global cities or globalization, they are most likely to find them. What planners plan is also a perception. The particular perception of the city that is adopted by the planner provides the foundation for planning. What I am exploring are new trends in planning in Asia's cities that would provide an opening for planners in Asia to go beyond the present-day Euro-centric planning systems, empowering them to develop plans that are more related to the people and the environment of the city.
Edward Said exposes how the U.S. stereotype of the Orient is constructed, hegemonized, and reprod... more Edward Said exposes how the U.S. stereotype of the Orient is constructed, hegemonized, and reproduced. The cities that the scholars talk about, the administrators administer, and the planners plan are also perceptions. This article investigates the construction of the perception of low-income areas in Colombo, Sri Lanka, as problems by its British colonial authorities in the 1910s–20s. It undertakes the cultural “unpacking” of this continuing colonial discourse. The article focuses on how the “concrete” living environments that had existed for many decades were re-presented as problems and as objective knowledge. It addresses a conflict and negotiation between two European groups: the British and British colonial authorities in Colombo. I argue that the tipping point of this transformation was the introduction of the Housing Ordinance of 1915 and that the transformation has more to do with British town planning discourses, of which the ordinance is a part, than with local conditions or indigenous or colonial viewpoints. However, this social production of urban problems must be seen within layers of power stemming from the imperial-colonial structures but mediated by regional officers who varied the practice of colonialism while maintaining the ideology of the “orientalist discourse.” It demonstrates that planners and authorities do not have a privileged vantage point to view the city, nor are their positions superior.
Cities People Places : An International Journal on Urban Environments, 2021
The number of people who are affected by urbanization has radically increased. However, the econo... more The number of people who are affected by urbanization has radically increased. However, the economic boom over the past decades has escalated the environmental problems. Among other solutions, environmentalists have proposed vertical greening, which refers to allowing vegetation to grow on the vertical surface of a building. With other sustainability-oriented strategies, vertical greening is thought to help resolve current environmental issues, as well as current health issues. It may prevent the cities from being unbearable during locked downs which impacts human’s mental health due to social distancing measures. Green walls are an option for cities for people to engage with Nature. Known for their pleasantness to the senses and earthy qualities, they boost human health and improve air quality. Plants can thrive on walls, making it a popular trend globally and also welcomes antidotes to stress and isolation. Plants which contain day-to-day supply of nutrition and anti-germ characte...
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has not given them the ability to know Wanathamulla (or similar neighbourhoods). They have missed the local realities. As planners have lost their instincts and empathy in their training, the politicians rationalise their action, rather than adopting rationality. ... What they have produced is a mess at best.
The local processes, from a formal standpoint, are incomplete, conflicting,
and changing at best. As Srivastava’s (2015) Gurgaon, Wanathamulla manifests entangled processes of intimacies, antagonisms, dreams, identities, boundaries, and their porousness. ... The local rationality has defied the outsiders, exposing their social, spatial, and economic illiteracy. ....
It is the high-rises built by the state that have become concentrations of poverty, vice, and drugs and flat-dwellers are the ones who need help. The politicians, professionals, and authorities opted to act without understanding but asserting, using their positional superiority, the notion that they can be turned into middle-class people by providing flats which makes them extremely powerful. In practice, the relocated people are forced to respond to middle-class demands of paying bills but without middle-class incomes and capabilities. This attempt to create consumers out of producers and shift their focus from livelihood to consumption has created only an assetless population trying to survive without social capital and economic competence, with very little agency. This is a process of causing “slum” conditions. ... This is slow violence; characterised by processes of gradual disempowerment of somewhat “law abiding outlaws” who are gradually pushed into chronic poverty.
The hardest impediment for those who strive is the stigma. Through their
projects, the authorities and the UDA project a negative image of Wanathamulla people as slum-dwellers and try to control them using brutal strategies such as eviction of self-builders and, in high-rises, disconnecting the water supply to select flats when they fail to pay the rent. The law enforcement is prevented by the stereotyping of the whole neighb3ourhood as “criminal”. This institutionalisation of stigma and second-class citizenship is much harder for the people of Wanathamulla to overcome. The result is the existence of an entrepreneurial community that is neither able to materialise the potential benefits of the resourceful. locale nor to contribute to the development of the neighbourhood and the city at large.
Yet Wanathamulla people are resilient, although at a high social and monetary cost. The people’s processes, intermittently supported by external actors such as Gunasinghe, NM, and Premadasa, have not only survived but also supported the people dumped in the high-rises to develop community. Their responses to the stigma are highly effective. Wanathamulla people have not simply built homes for themselves but have established and reproduced a community, creating jobs, and livelihoods for themselves.
has not given them the ability to know Wanathamulla (or similar neighbourhoods). They have missed the local realities. As planners have lost their instincts and empathy in their training, the politicians rationalise their action, rather than adopting rationality. ... What they have produced is a mess at best.
The local processes, from a formal standpoint, are incomplete, conflicting,
and changing at best. As Srivastava’s (2015) Gurgaon, Wanathamulla manifests entangled processes of intimacies, antagonisms, dreams, identities, boundaries, and their porousness. ... The local rationality has defied the outsiders, exposing their social, spatial, and economic illiteracy. ....
It is the high-rises built by the state that have become concentrations of poverty, vice, and drugs and flat-dwellers are the ones who need help. The politicians, professionals, and authorities opted to act without understanding but asserting, using their positional superiority, the notion that they can be turned into middle-class people by providing flats which makes them extremely powerful. In practice, the relocated people are forced to respond to middle-class demands of paying bills but without middle-class incomes and capabilities. This attempt to create consumers out of producers and shift their focus from livelihood to consumption has created only an assetless population trying to survive without social capital and economic competence, with very little agency. This is a process of causing “slum” conditions. ... This is slow violence; characterised by processes of gradual disempowerment of somewhat “law abiding outlaws” who are gradually pushed into chronic poverty.
The hardest impediment for those who strive is the stigma. Through their
projects, the authorities and the UDA project a negative image of Wanathamulla people as slum-dwellers and try to control them using brutal strategies such as eviction of self-builders and, in high-rises, disconnecting the water supply to select flats when they fail to pay the rent. The law enforcement is prevented by the stereotyping of the whole neighb3ourhood as “criminal”. This institutionalisation of stigma and second-class citizenship is much harder for the people of Wanathamulla to overcome. The result is the existence of an entrepreneurial community that is neither able to materialise the potential benefits of the resourceful. locale nor to contribute to the development of the neighbourhood and the city at large.
Yet Wanathamulla people are resilient, although at a high social and monetary cost. The people’s processes, intermittently supported by external actors such as Gunasinghe, NM, and Premadasa, have not only survived but also supported the people dumped in the high-rises to develop community. Their responses to the stigma are highly effective. Wanathamulla people have not simply built homes for themselves but have established and reproduced a community, creating jobs, and livelihoods for themselves.