Abstract
This paper explores how the aspirational urban form of the ‘world-class city’ is produced from within the city itself. Rather than focusing on global competition between cities, the analysis considers how local actors in key industries discursively and materially produce the world-class city through their labor. The analytic of connection is introduced as central to understanding how world-class city-making projects are achieved. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Colombo’s high-end real estate sector, the article examines how a successful broker creates and manages connections across different scales and registers. It focuses on three key areas: (1) the rhetorical connections drawn between luxury real estate and national development; (2) the connections created between wealthy foreign clients and local property owners and (3) the work of connecting disparate narratives about supply and demand for luxury housing. I highlight that against the backdrop of considerable economic and political uncertainty, connections are valuable even if they do not result in immediate profit. Offering a glimpse into the world of white-collar professionals in the luxury real estate industry, this paper underscores that world-class city-making projects are embedded in local realities even as they reflect generalized patterns of urban development.
Highlights
The sights and sounds of construction are constant companions in Colombo
Many academic studies, including several focused on Colombo, have juxtaposed the urban imaginaries of planners and state representatives with the lived practices and experiences of city-dwellers, those engaged in informal labor and marginalized from power (e.g. Elyachar, 2010; Palat Narayanan, 2020a; Palat Narayanan and Veron, 2018; Perera, 2009; Simone, 2004)
By highlighting the labor of a real estate broker who works with wealthy clients and markets some of Colombo’s most exclusive properties, I offer insights into the ways that informal channels, personal connections and unpredictable relationships characterize the work of those working within the heart of an industry which is central to the making of a world-class city, not peripheral to it
Summary
The sights and sounds of construction are constant companions in Colombo. Since the end of the Sri Lankan civil war in May 2009, the city has been in a permanent state of building. Keywords Real estate, connection, world-class city, aspiration, labor, Colombo, Sri Lanka
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