Colombo Urban Regeneration Project — Sri Lanka's Contested High-Rise Resettlement Programme

Since 2010, Sri Lanka's Urban Development Authority (UDA) — placed under the Ministry of Defence and Urban Development between 2010 and 2015 — has pursued a 'slum-free Colombo' agenda, relocating families from inner-city shanty and underserved settlements into government-built multi-storey apartment blocks, typically 400–550 square feet in size. The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank approved a $200 million loan in April 2019 to continue the programme as the 'Support to Colombo Urban Regeneration Project,' financing relocation for roughly 5,500 additional households (about 23,000 people) in its current phase, with the loan closing scheduled for December 2027.

Reported targets and figures vary significantly by source and year — the UDA's original stated goal was to relocate 50,000 families, while Sri Lanka's Centre for Policy Alternatives documented figures ranging from 70,000 to 135,000 families targeted across programme phases as of 2014. AIIB itself classifies the project's resettlement component as Category A, its highest environmental and social risk rating, 'due to the scale and complexity of the involuntary resettlement involved.'

Independent documentation from the Centre for Policy Alternatives, the Bank Information Center and Sri Lankan and international press describes evictions carried out with military involvement, short or no notice, and in many cases no compensation; replacement units too small for the large extended families that occupied them, producing what researchers describe as 'vertical slums'; and separation of previously adjacent households. Critics point to cases such as a Colombo shanty site leased to a private developer for 5 billion rupees (about $38 million) over 99 years as evidence that freeing high-value land for commercial redevelopment, not resident welfare, has driven parts of the programme. AIIB has publicly committed to reforms — including proximity-based relocation and stronger post-resettlement support — in response to these documented shortcomings. This practice is included as an honest, evidence-based cautionary case: it demonstrates real delivery of housing stock and urban redevelopment at scale, alongside serious, independently documented harms to the communities it displaced.