Abstract:
Over the last 20 years many urban areas have experienced dramatic growth, as a result of rapid
population growth and as the world’s economy has been transformed by a combination of rapid
technological and political change. Around 3 billion people, virtually half of the world’s total
population now live in urban settlements. Over the next 30 years, virtually all of the world’s
population growth is expected to be concentrated in urban areas in the developing world. Anyhow,
there are so many challenges confronted by the developing world and Sri Lanka also not exceptional.
In this line, this paper explains about the urbanization in Sri Lanka and urban development and its
challenges. This is a qualitative study and, for this the researcher used secondary sources such as
books, journals, articles and website sources. The researcher found the recent trends in the
urbanization process of Sri Lanka and divide the challenges as the socio, economic and
environmental. As a social challenge, the people of the urban area faced transport and traffic
congestion, housing affordability issues, urban crime and overcrowding. As an economic challenge,
unemployment, poverty and increasing competition are considered as the main challenges and as an
environmental challenge the sanitation, lack of access to safe water, squatter settlements, water
pollution, trash disposal, loss of soil resource, solid waste increase and lack of solid waste
management, flooding and drainage problems are found. Finally, the researcher argued with some
policies and strategies to increase the urban growth and development opportunities
