Book Chapters 

  • Asianizing Asian Cities: Spatial Stories, Local Voices, and Emerging Trans-localities, in Transforming Asian Cities: Intellectual Impasse, Asianizing Space, and Emerging Translocalities, Nihal Perera and Wing-Shing Tang, eds.: 243-61. Routledge, 2013

  • Critical Vernacularism: Multiple roots, Cascades of Thought, and the Local Production of Architecture, in Transforming Asian Cities, Perera and Tang, eds.: 78-93. Routledge, 2013

  • In Search of Asian Urbanisms: Limited Visibility and Intellectual Impasse, (with Tang) in Transforming Asian Cities, Perera and Tang, eds.: 1-20. Routledge. 2013

  • When Planning Ideas Land: Mahaweli’s People-Centered Approach, inCrossing Borders: International Exchanges and Planning Practices, Patsy Healey and Robert Upton, eds.: 141-72. Routledge, 2010

  • Rebuilding Lives, Undermining Oppositions: Spaces of War and Peace in Sri Lanka In Spatializing Politics: Culture and Geography in Postcolonial Sri Lanka, Cathrine Brun, Tariq Jazeel, eds.: 168-93. Sage, 2009

  • Chandigarh: India’s Modernist Experiment, in Planning Twentieth-Century Capital Cities, David Gordon, ed.: 226-36. London: Routledge, 2006

  • The Making of a National Capital: Conflicts, Contradictions, and Contestations in Sri Jayawardhanapura, in National Symbols, Fractured Identities: Contesting the National Narrative, Michael Geisler, ed.: 241-272. Middlebury, VT: Middlebury College Press, 2005

  • Feminizing the City: Gender and Space in Colonial Colombo.In Trans-Status Subjects: Genders in the Globalization of South and Southeast Asia, Sonita Sarker and Esha Niyogi De, eds.: 67-87. Duke University Press, 2002

My main research interest is in the social production of space. The work focuses on how ordinary people negotiate given or imposed space and produce their own (along with subjectivity and identity) for their daily activities and cultural practices. 

Allied formal areas of study include: politics of space, postcolonial urbanism, urban political-economy; colonial urbanism; postcolonial and subaltern studies; landscape interpretation; world-systems; international development; politics of development and planning; issues of identity, representation, gender; qualitative methods; social justice; multicultural planning, globalization, Asian urbanism and planning.

Refereed Journal Articles

  • The Planners’ City: The Construction of Town-Planning Perception of Colombo Environment and Planning A 40/ 1 (January 2008): 57-73.

  • Importing Problems: The Impact of a Housing Ordinance on Colombo Arab World Geographer, 8, 1-2 (Summer 2005): 61-76.

  • Contesting Visions: Hybridity, Liminality, and Authorship of the Chandigarh Plan Planning Perspectives 19, 2 (April 2004): 179-203.

  • Indigenising the Colonial City: Late 19 -Century Colombo and Its Landscape, Urban Studies 39, 9 (2002): 1703-21

  • Globalization from Asian Locality: The Construction of Post-Tsunami Kalametiya Social Science Journal of Hong Kong 63, 2 (2013)

  • Competing Futures: Legibility, Resistance, and the Redevelopment of Dharavi Journal of Localitology 8 (October 2012): 113-44.

  • Critical Vernacularism: A Locally Produced Global Difference Journal of Architectural Education 63, 2 (2010)

  • Asian Urbanization and Planning: Viewing the Production of Space from the Spaces of Production Bhumi 1, 2 (2010 December): 1-24.

  • People’s Spaces: Familiarization, Subject Formation, and Emergent Spaces in Colombo Planning Theory 8, 3 (2009): 50-74.

Work in Readers

Exploring Colombo: The Relevance of a Knowledge of New York?, in The Global Cities Reader, Neil Brenner and Roger Keil, eds.: 339-45. New York: Routledge, 2006

Other Significant Publications:

  • Book Review: Ravi Kalia: Gandhinagar: Building National Identity in Postcolonial India (University of South Carolina Press, 2004), in Urban Studies 43, 7 (June 2006): 10-11.

  • Book Review: Kumari Jayawardena, Nobodies to Somebodies: The Rise of the Colonial Bourgeoisie in Sri Lanka (Zed Books, 2002) in American Historical Review 110, 1 (February 2005): 117-8.

  • Making Asian Cities Livable: The Kyeonggi Plan and Other Experiences WLCF2003 in The Transformation of the 21 & Life-Culture Salim; Special C Session: Life-Culture and Regional Development Planning: Making Gyeonggi a Livable Place. Suwon: Kyonggi Research Institute, Kyonggi Cultural Foundation, Life-Cultural Study Institute, 133-147, 2003.

  • Emerging Trends in Asia’s Planning and Urbanization. Proceedings: Seventh International Congress of Asian Planning Schools Association (APSA): Creating Better Cities in the 21 Century :I104-I111. Hanoi: Hanoi Architectural University, 2003.

  • Unsettled in a Settlement in Shanghai, in BIGsmall Project, Wes Janz and David Stairs, eds.: 16-7. East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University, 2011

  • Combining History and Future: Continuity and Change in Kandy, Sri Lanka, International Conference on Traditional Temple Architecture Conservation, Conference Proceedings: 19-36. Tainan City: Taipei University of Science and Technology, Taiwan, 2007

  • Book Review, Bishwapriya Sanyal, ed.: Comparative Planning Cultures (Routledge, 2005), in Urban Geography 28, 7 (Oct-Nov. 2007).

  • Accommodation, Contestation, Negotiation: The Construction of Urban Cultures and Spaces, Urban Imagination and Contemporary Art in the Public Sphere Proceedings of the Busan Biennale International Symposium: 49-60. Seoul: South Korea, 2006.

  • Book Review: Chengri Ding and Yan Song eds.: Emerging Land and Housing Markets in China (Cambridge, MA: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, 2005), inJournal of Planning Education and Research 26, 1 (October 2006).