Nocturnal urbanism: the case of Kimbulawala food street

Urban nightlife has been the focus of many studies over the last few decades. Existing studies dealt with multiple aspects of nightlife activities in the city, ranging from its contribution to local economies, impacts on societies, and branding of cities to its role in catering to intimacy needs, both legitimate and illegitimate behaviors, etc. In this work, we intend to shed light on another dimension of urban life: the ‘nocturnal urbanism’: the life and times of spaces of the city that fall asleep during daytime and glow at night. These spaces provide planners and urban designers with essential lessons on the multiple facets of resilience, deviating from the popularly discussed aspects of urban resilience. ‘Urbanization,’ not necessarily the consequence of rural-to-urban migration but the result of an increasingly ‘urban way of life,’ exposes all parties in the urban areas to different challenges. The ‘urbanized’ way of life provides less space in the daily routine of most urban residents to engage in the conventional method of household engagements, compelling them to look for other means of finding convenience. They see resilience in the challenges of continuing life through night-time spaces.

On the other hand, the inevitable costs of living in urban areas compel middle-class households to earn an extra living, either as a means of gap financing household expenditure or to earn a sole livelihood. The night-time spaces allow them to be resilient to the challenging cost of continuing life. On the other hand, city governments (local authorities) find it challenging to boost local economies amidst competitive market environments to attract investments, thus enabling them to promote night-time spaces to be resilient to declining challenges. They all together try to be resilient to multiple forces that pose many threats to their very existence. The case of Kimbulawala in the periphery of the City of Colombo, presented in this study through a series of narratives of the inhabitants of the place, officials of governing institutions and the urban planners, and the author’s on-site observations, provides a classic example of a synergy of these different facets of resilience.