Colombo Urban Lab

From rising electricity tariffs to shrinking coping capacities, how are Colombo’s low-income households navigating Sri Lanka’s ongoing polycrisis?

At the 'Poverty and Development in Times of Crisis' conference hosted by Centre for Poverty Analysis, Colombo Urban Lab Research Associate Meghal Perera presented her paper based on findings from CUL’s long-term research with low-income communities across Colombo between 2021-2026.

The paper highlights how repeated economic shocks and energy tariff revisions have reshaped everyday electricity use, deepened vulnerabilities, and strained already fragile household coping mechanisms. It calls for energy policies that centre the lived realities of the urban poor in times of crisis.

On May Day, we celebrate labour. But whose labour do we see, and whose do we leave out?

Domestic workers sustain households, power the care economy, and enable others to participate in the workforce. Yet their work remains invisible, excluded from labour protections, undervalued in policy, and rarely recognised as essential economic contribution.

Ensuring minimum wages, paid leave, maternity benefits, formal contracts, and access to social security is not just about policy reform, it is about recognising domestic work as dignified work.

This May Day, let’s expand our understanding of labour, and push for systems that recognise, protect, and value domestic workers.

How do cities actually plan for rising heat stress? CUL Director Iromi Perera recently joined government representatives and development practitioners from Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Bangladesh and Cambodia for a study visit titled 'Turning Down the Heat' in Melbourne, Australia, to explore how other cities are responding to rising temperatures in real, practical ways.

What stood out: heat isn’t a single-sector issue. Melbourne’s approach shows how various sectors, including health, urban planning, water, and finance, along with local communities, need to work together - not in silos.

As temperatures rise across the region, the question isn’t whether to act, but how to design systems that actually work on the ground.

Current systems are not designed for continuous, overlapping crises.

Targeted approaches like Aswesuma are excluding vulnerable households, while existing support is not enough to address the scale and complexity of need.

We need to move beyond short-term fixes.

✔️ Universal social protection
✔️ Expanded and better-funded cash transfers
✔️ Investments in care, food, labour, and climate resilience

Without meaningful change, the impacts of this crisis risk becoming generational.

📊 These recommendations are grounded in qualitative research and ongoing engagement with communities across Colombo.

Current systems are not designed for continuous, overlapping crises.

Targeted approaches like Aswesuma are excluding vulnerable households, while existing support is not enough to address the scale and complexity of need.

We need to move beyond short-term fixes.
✔️ Universal social protection
✔️ Expanded and better-funded cash transfers
✔️ Investments in care, food, labour, and climate resilience

Without meaningful change, the impacts of this crisis risk becoming generational.

📊 These recommendations are grounded in qualitative research and ongoing engagement with communities across Colombo.

🔗 Read the full policy brief here: https://www.csf-asia.org/nothing-left-to-pawn-impact-of-polycrisis-on-colombos-working-class-poor/

For Colombo’s working-class households, vulnerability is cumulative - shocks don’t come one at a time.

Cyclone-induced floods, lost income, post-disaster illness, rising electricity costs, and limited access to relief intersect, leaving families with little room to recover.

What looks like “coping” is often forced survival, shaped by overlapping crises and gaps in social protection.

📊 Our latest policy brief draws on household surveys, qualitative research, and ongoing engagement with communities across Colombo.

🔗 Read it here: https://www.csf-asia.org/nothing-left-to-pawn-impact-of-polycrisis-on-colombos-working-class-poor/

For Colombo’s working class poor, the crisis never truly ended. Instead, it has become an everyday condition.

Rising costs, depleted savings, and exhausted coping strategies have become the norm. Households struggle to meet daily needs, from food to medicine, while small shocks deepen vulnerability and reduce quality of life.

What looks like “adaptation” is often forced survival, highlighting the long-term impacts of Sri Lanka’s polycrisis.

📊 Our latest policy brief highlights findings from our qualitative research, household surveys, and ongoing engagement with communities across Colombo.

🔗 Read it here: https://www.csf-asia.org/nothing-left-to-pawn-impact-of-polycrisis-on-colombos-working-class-poor/

What can a family’s food plate reveal about polycrisis, time poverty, urban infrastructures and city planning?

Iromi’s keynote address at UTA-Do African Cities Workshop in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia delved into the work of the Colombo Urban Lab in influencing city making and policy planning, through the experiences of the working class and informal sector in Sri Lanka’s capital city.

The workshop was hosted by The Urban Center in Addis Ababa in partnership with Wagon2Africa (a consortium led by the Polytechnic of Turin, Italy), with this year’s edition centering the Water-Energy-Food Nexus in African cities , a theme that resonates deeply with CUL’s own work at the intersections of infrastructure, nutrition, energy and the lives of working class and informal sector communities in

Domestic workers are the invisible infrastructure that keeps Colombo running. They enable women’s participation in the workforce, hold together fragile urban care systems, and fill gaps left by limited public childcare. Yet they remain excluded from minimum wage protections, EPF/ETF, paid leave and pensions.

Colombo Urban Lab's Junior Researcher Piyumi Wattuhewa explores domestic work as essential urban care infrastructure, workers' lived realities in Colombo and what meaningful social protection for them can look like.
Read the article here: https://www.csf-asia.org/domestic-workers-as-care-infrastructure-in-cities/

We used human-centred design (HCD) methodologies for our workshops aiming to raise awareness about social protection among working-class communities in Colombo and developed a practical guide on how our methodology can be used or adapted. It is designed for practitioners, researchers, organisers, and policymakers working to strengthen citizen voice in social protection systems.
See the guide through the link here: https://www.csf-asia.org/a-guide-for-raising-awareness-on-social-protection/

Pettah’s Floating Market shows how urban regeneration can go wrong when projects ignore local needs and context. High costs, low relevance, and poor planning turn ‘regeneration’ into a tourist trap.
Read more in our new report "White Elephants or Cash Cows? Evaluating Two Urban Development Projects" to learn more: https://www.csf-asia.org/white-elephants-or-cash-cows-evaluating-two-urban-development-projects-in-colombo/