Land-Use Planning Model: A Case Study on Transit-Oriented Development (TOD)

Many communities are shifting their land-use approaches by moving towards cities for better access to transportation and other facilities resulting in densification, particularly around main streets and urban centres. These trends are driving the increased emphasis on better models of city planning for urban centres, urbanization of suburbs of cities and crowding of either side of minor and major highways of Sri Lanka. Transit Oriented Development (TOD), is found to be a concept that has succeeded in reaching better sustainability for both society and the environment closer to the main transit access. The concept has been a success in the reduction of individual vehicle usage and the practice in the usage of the main transit systems which is in lieu of the concept of sustainability. In this milieu, this study was aimed at creating a TOD model for a developing city as a case study to verify the pros and cons of the concept of TOD in a context in Sri Lanka. A qualitative study was done with in-depth interviews to verify the complementary factors of a selected village in Sri Lanka to be converted to a TOD model as a case study. This paper presents the conceptual model on TOD for Meewatura, Sri Lanka.