Colombo and its new look !

[bronxbull]

good for you.

But growing in such countries gives you immunity.

 

[Glorino]

Tourism isn't main industry in SL yet, it does not adding much to our economy.

What I have to say there are some countries on this earth f****** dirty, dusty looking and over crowded etc. Thank god I fortunately born in an sweet country. heh

In 1980-1982 when i was in Colombo, there was only one main street from where other roads branches.It was extremely dusty with the exception of the seaside areas-evening wondering there was nice. After the civil war-one man made a difference to turn Colombo in particular and the country in general to bring about cleanliness.Even people in Singapore are referring to Colombo's cleanliness.Bless the leaders who are able to bring about such transformation in such a short time after the war

 

[Azizam]

In 1980-1982 when i was in Colombo, there was only one main street from where other roads branches.It was extremely dusty with the exception of the seaside areas-evening wondering there was nice. After the civil war-one man made a difference to turn Colombo in particular and the country in general to bring about cleanliness.Even people in Singapore are referring to Colombo's cleanliness.Bless the leaders who are able to bring about such transformation in such a short time after the war

Exactly. Instead our *******s are cursing him all day and night for every single problem they have.

 

[samv]

Work has brought me to Colombo, Sri Lanka. As the director of Balmond Studio I travel to our branch office here quite regularly but I’ve been visiting Sri Lanka for over 15 years and the changes I’ve witnessed in the past few years since the civil war was crushed in 2009 have been quite phenomenal.

This morning I left my apartment and was able to hail an air conditioned taxi, not a tin-can-on-wheels tuk-tuk. Driving along, the streets are impeccably clean, sewers are closed-up and people navigate the city with purpose and leisure. I spy Colombo’s first roof top bar overlooking the Indian ocean. Cafés selling espressos and cappuccinos have cropped up everywhere and down the road from where I stay a luxury shop selling designer watches has just opened. A new cricket stadium gleams in the sun. My colleagues go on a quick business trip in the afternoon to visit Galle, zipping down the new highway, a journey once four hours halved to a mere hour and a half.

Walk along the waterfront and you can see sites boarded off, massive placards announcing the arrival of the Hyatt and the Shangri-La. Drive along busy Galle road and gleaming residential buildings are beginning to spring up, complete with elevated podium for luxury living. This is all a far cry from the days of litter piled up on the streets, roadblocks, potholes and general dilapidation.

Colombo is certainly on a very exciting journey but it is also at a crossroads. What kind of city does Colombo really want to be? You can see a desire to ape the metropolises of other South East Asian cities, such as Hong Kong and Singapore, but is this the right direction?

Part of Colombo’s charm lies in its expansive sprawl, the wide boulevards and intimate low-rise scale of colonial buildings co-existing with the modest high-rise buildings. Certainly there is room for a new architectural icon and I’m looking forward to seeing how the city will truly embrace stand-out design to revitalize and create a genuinely unique cityscape. This will prove a key step in Colombo carving out a place for itself on the world map. But a balance should also be maintained between the Old and New – I’m pleasantly surprised to see the once run down old colonial buildings being currently renovated and hope this direction also continues.

But warning signs are already there. Roads are already beginning to clog up with traffic. Consideration needs to be put into proper master planning and infrastructure – another Jakarta, a city with some of the world’s worst traffic, would be a disaster. And the attention to a clean, safe and pedestrian friendly environment needs to spread beyond the city centre, to affect the more suburban areas and still run down pockets of the city.

Colombo isn’t there yet, but it’s certainly on it’s way.

Sarah Gormley, Editor in Chief TiP

Colombo | TIP - Exploring New Thinking and Theory

Good flower market and Water's Edge park in Colombo, Sri Lanka. - YouTube

 

[samv]

NEW highway connecting Colombo to its airport -- built by the Chinese... to be opened in October

 

[NGV-H]

True but where ll the money come from and what about the work force for agriculture,you want to earn money only from tourism.

Sri Lanka isn't relying on tourism, it only makes up a small part of the income. We're working on building a manufacturing base, and transshipment, knowledge-intensive jobs, etc. Sri Lanka produces enough rice to feed itself, and recently we have harvested enough to even allow 10,000MT to be donated to Somalia.

Colombo Port recently started handling more cargo than even Mumbai, and is the most important port in South Asia now, impressive for a city with less than 10% of Mumbai's population.

I wish India luck in the future, growth in South Asia is good for all of us.

 

[bronxbull]

Goodluck to you too but all the other stuff u r talking about ll work only as long as cost allows and they generate pollution too.

Mumbai is not even n0.3 in India portwise,Kandla is.Nonetheless goodluck.

 

[samv]

Goodluck to you too but all the other stuff u r talking about ll work only as long as cost allows and they generate pollution too.

Mumbai is not even n0.3 in India portwise,Kandla is.Nonetheless goodluck.

http://www.defence.pk/forums/central-south-asia/271852-colombo-now-south-asias-number-one-port.html

 

[bronxbull]

cool,goodluck.

 

[rio90]

In 1980-1982 when i was in Colombo, there was only one main street from where other roads branches.It was extremely dusty with the exception of the seaside areas-evening wondering there was nice. After the civil war-one man made a difference to turn Colombo in particular and the country in general to bring about cleanliness.Even people in Singapore are referring to Colombo's cleanliness.Bless the leaders who are able to bring about such transformation in such a short time after the war

well said mate..i have so much respect for Gotabaya.I hope he`ll be come SL`s next president

 

[bronxbull]

Oh,i thought it was jayawardene.

 

[NGV-H]

Proud as a South Asian , a country Sri Lanka is so clean and its infrastructure well executed.Colombo city is very clean.
The way to go forward in South Asia

I hope all of South Asia becomes clean and well executed!
I can't wait to see what Colombo will be like after all the huge infrastructure projects are complete in 10 years, with monorail, clean piped water for everyone, new roads, rebuilt drainage, doubled port size, Port City reclamation!

 

[samv]

Clean and Colombo, a combo

The Hindu's Sri Lanka correspondent, Meera Srinivasan says Colombo is a city where even a stray piece of trash on the road will surprise you, a place where cleanliness is only enhanced by the greenery all around

"How come?" I wondered, when I recently spotted a used, disposable plastic cup, of a famous yogurt brand, lying on the pavement in my Colombo neighbourhood.

In the last four months that I have been here, I have seldom seen anything synthetic on the roads – no polythene bags being chauffeured around by the breeze, no food packets with rice spilling out, no disfigured mineral water bottles.

Occasionally, I would spot dry leaves popping up on the pavements. And invariably, I would also hear a sort of brushing sound – after a few weeks here, I could recognise the sound even from a distance – it was the conservancy worker’s large, fork-like bamboo broom toiling over the broad concrete pavement.

A middle-aged woman, wearing an orange t-shirt, like many conservancy workers here, would not spare even a single dry leaf. On several days I have seen her mid-morning, and on some days, in the afternoon.

Colombo, as some of my friends had told me earlier, is a city where even a stray piece of trash on the road will surprise you. Cleanliness is only enhanced by the greenery all around.

When my friend, a local journalist, countered my point of view saying, “Oh, that is only the heart of Colombo. It’s meant to be all posh, you know,” I thought that she perhaps knew better.

All the same, from my limited experience of travelling outside Colombo on a few assignments, I feel that the average city or town in Sri Lanka tends to be far cleaner than its Indian counterpart.

I can already hear some of the arguments against what I say – India is a far bigger country, we are grappling with a population of over a billion and conservancy is a greater challenge in such a context. I have no disagreement over any of these.

As someone who has been a Chennaiite all her life, it is interesting to see how this neighbour – just a 50-minute flight away – manages to be so clean.

When it comes to things like cleanliness, public transport or urban sanitation, you usually tend to turn to the West for benchmarks.

When you speak of the Chennai Metro, you are secretly hoping it would be like the London tube network one day. When you speak of doing road trips, one of your friends will tell you how he drove for 14 hours in the States with no sign of fatigue. Similarly, when it comes to how clean a city is, even if we have to consider examples closer to home, we point to a developed country like Singapore.

However, here is a city right next door, with very similar challenges as any other developing South Asian country, that takes its cleanliness very seriously. You may have a million differences with Sri Lanka – for patriotic, political or ideological reasons, but you have to give it to the conservancy agencies here and larger civic sense of citizens for maintaining the city this way.

Not very long ago, a 30-something sales professional I met here, told me that the army personnel – who defeated the LTTE – were heroes of the country. I am not sure I agree with him entirely.

But I do know one hero for sure - the middle-aged woman I spot every morning who, with her broom, coaxes every little leaf on the pavement to step away and make way for the pedestrian.

Clean and Colombo, a combo - The Hindu

 

[Azizam]

Oh,i thought it was jayawardene.

hahahaha Jayawardana is the one who ruined the country

 

[Azizam]