Page 12 - U4SSC Case study: Affordable housing and social inclusion, June 2020

In the shadow of this behemoth, a smaller, more natural project was built. This case incorporates
commercial buildings among the city assets and products, and encompasses recycling and re-using as
the action items as defined within the U4SSC ‘Guidelines on strategies for circular cities’.

Challenges

Running parallel to these mega developments, the local tourism industry had suffered a series of
setbacks due to the mismanagement of the area’s main tourism attraction. Yala National Park is the
second-largest national park in Sri Lanka, and the most visited. The park covers 979 square kilometres
and is located about 300 kilometres from Colombo.

The park is best known for its variety of wild animals and is crucially important for the conservation of
Sri Lankan elephants. It also has the highest density of Sri Lankan leopards in the country, as well as
an abundance of aquatic birds.

Figure 1: Restaurant and Bar at night

However, poaching, gem-mining, logging, encroachment by agriculture, and free-roaming domestic
livestock are the main threats to the park. Three wardens have been killed in clashes with poachers.

In addition the noise, air pollution and incessant traffic on the only safari road have caused significant
trauma to the wildlife. The situation was highlighted in 2012, when a BBC journalist, Charles Havilland,
wrote a scathing article about his visit to the park, highlighting the speeding and traffic jams following
the death of a 4-month-old female leopard in a hit-and-run incident.

6 Case study: Affordable housing and social inclusion, June 2020