The activities of the Town & Country Planning Research Unit are planned towards the accomplishment of the Unit's main Objectives:
To support the continuous development of the quality of the academic content of subject modules offered by the Department of Town & Country Planning in both undergraduate and postgraduate levels, by means of finding relevant reading material, organizing research components integrated within teaching activities, and facilitating pre-course preparatory work needed in lecture modules, enabling students to access updated knowledge base.
- To nourish research interests within the staff and the students, by means of organizing interactive dialogues, research seminars, publications, etc.
- To develop university-industry links by means of undertaking research consultancy work for external agencies.
- To initiate a half-yearly publication, which will be leading to an internationally refereed journal, while contributing research articles to other journals published by the Faculty of Architecture, University of Moratuwa and other local and international research institutes.
The Strategies to accomplish these objectives can be stated as follows:
Objective 1:
A literature survey through internet and other sources to setup a collection of books, journal papers, and working papers on all subject modules that are being offered within the department.
Each Subject Coordinator will be supported by a qualified Town Planning Graduate, who will be employed by the Department both for Research and Tutorial Assistant from May 2007. The appointments will be done as per the provisions made in University recruitment schemes.
Objective 2:
The Department Level Presentations will be organized at the end of each academic year from April 2007, in which the Final Year Dissertation Candidates and their Supervisors will be presenting their work for Department level review.
The Department is hosting the APSA (Asian Planning Schools Association) conference in August 2007. This will be taken as an opportunity for maximum number of students and staff members to participate and present their work, as well as to establish a network of contacts with international research personnel and organizations.
Presently the following areas of research are being handled by the academic members of the Department, who will be encouraged to present their work at annual Department Research Seminars, Faculty level Research Seminars and Other Conferences:
- Transnational Planning and Cross Border Planning Issues of South Asia
- Traces of the Ancient Human Settlements in Sri Lanka.
- Spatial Information Systems and their contextualization for Sri Lanka.
- Finding Definition for Urban Design in Sri Lanka.
- Morphology and Socio-Spatial dynamics of Medium and Small Scale Towns of Sri Lanka.
- Revisiting Modern Town Planning in Sri Lanka.
- Gender Equity and Space.
Objective 3:
The Department has already started a few consultancy projects for both State Sector and Private Sector Agencies. These projects will be taken as opportunities for students to be exposed into different areas of planning and related activities in real world practices.
Possibilities for a few more collaborative projects with the outside agencies as well as with foreign universities are already in the discussion.