For almost a decade, Colombo has been the site of a massive urban regeneration programme driven by the public and the private sectors. One of the main components of this regeneration programme has been the involuntary acquisition of land from slum communities and subsequent resettlement of slum dwellers in multi-storied housing complexes. How does such rapid resettlement in high-rise apartments impact the slum dwellers who are subjected to such treatment?
This article tries to determine how resettlement and associated social, cultural and economic transformations impact on beneficiaries’ sense of wellbeing in the medium term. While the concept of wellbeing is broad and has been applied by scholars in various fields of scholarship, this article utilizes the concept in the specific context of development-forced displacement and resettlement (DFDR). We examine how displacement and resettlement determine material, relational and subjective dimensions of wellbeing among the affected communities.
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