At
present Kochchikade, Kollupitiya, Mattakkuliya, Dematagoda, Cinnamon Gardens,
Bambalapitiya, Wellawatte, Narahenpita and Kirillapone units have relatively a
larger floor space used by residential activities.
Colombo
Fort, Kochchikade and Kollupitiya have the largest Commercial retail and wholesale
floor space than other planning units. For commercial and banking sectors, Fort,
Kollupitiya, Bambalapitiya and Maradana have become more attractive in recent
times.
The floor space occupied
by the institutional sector reveals high concentration in Cinnamon Gardens (0.39
Mn. sq. m.), Fort (0.23 Mn. sq. m.), Maradana (0.18 Mn. sq. m.) and Kollupitiya
(0.18 Mn.. sq. m.). These activities are gradually expanding to Wellawatta, Narahenpita
and Kirillapone.
Out of the 13.03
Mn. sq. m. of floor space about 7.62 Mn. sq. m. of space is accounted for by residential
use, the largest land use in the city. This is about 60.0 percent of the total
floor space. The other three main functions, like commercial, retail and wholesale
and institutional categories of land use occupy only about 30.0 percent of floor
space. This is not a healthy structure in the land use distribution of the city
.
As
part of the land use survey, the team collected information on buildings under
construction in the city. Using this information, an attempt was made to estimate
the possible addition of floor space of these buildings currently under construction
to the total floor space in 1977.
There
were 882 buildings under the construction stage at the time the field survey was
carried out between July and August, 1996. The total floor space that could be
expected from these new constructions is in the range of 0.8 to 0.93 Mn. square
meters by the end of 1997, which will increase the total floor space available
in the city to between13.94 and 14.59 Mn. square meters.
Net addition of floor
space is expected to be around 0.70 Mn. square meters. Of this net total, residential
activities may require about 48.0 percent and commercial activities about another
48.0 percent giving a total utilisation of 98%. On the basis of the total floor
space that was under utilisation at the end of 1996, it can be estimated that
another 5.6 Mn. square meters of floor space will be required by 2010.
The
city of Colombo offers great potential for development in commercial, financial
and banking sectors and port related activities. The proposed development plan
supports the realisation of this potential by providing adequate space for these
activities. This strategy is built around the concept of "Reinforcement of
the City."
