Contesting the Indian City

Global Visions and the Politics of the Local

Shatkin, Gavin (Editor)

Studies in Urban and Social Change

1. Edition September 2013
332 Pages, Softcover
Wiley & Sons Ltd

ISBN: 978-1-4443-6703-4

John Wiley & Sons

Wiley Online Library Sample Chapter

Short Description

Contesting the Indian City features a collection of cutting-edge empirical studies that offer insights into issues of politics, equity, and space relating to urban development in modern India. Papers, which are organized around contestation over the terms of access to urban space, representation in political processes, and knowledge generation and the terms of access to information about the city, serve to deepen our understanding of the changes Indian cities are experiencing.

Further versions

Contesting the Indian City features a collection of cutting-edge empirical studies that offer insights into issues of politics, equity, and space relating to urban development in modern India.
* Features studies that serve to deepen our theoretical understandings of the changes that Indian cities are experiencing
* Examines how urban redevelopment policy and planning, and reforms of urban politics and real estate markets, are shaping urban spatial change in India
* The first volume to bring themes of urban political reform, municipal finance, land markets, and real estate industry together in an international publication

Series Editors' Preface ix

Preface and Acknowledgments x

1 Introduction: Contesting the Indian City: Global Visions and the Politics of the Local 1
Gavin Shatkin and Sanjeev Vidyarthi

2 Contested Developments: Enduring Legacies and Emergent Political Actors in Contemporary Urban India 39
Liza Weinstein, Neha Sami, and Gavin Shatkin

3 Conflict and Commensuration: Contested Market Making in India's Private Real Estate Development Sector 65
Llerena Guiu Searle

4 "One-Man Handled": Fragmented Power and Political Entrepreneurship in Globalizing Mumbai 91
Liza Weinstein

5 Power to the People? A Study of Bangalore's Urban Task Forces 121
Neha Sami

6 Social Conflict and the Neoliberal City: A Case of Hindu-Muslim Violence in India 145
Ipsita Chatterjee

7 Gentrifying the State: Governance, Participation, and the Rise of Middle-Class Power in Delhi 176
D. Asher Ghertner

8 Becoming a Slum: From Municipal Colony to Illegal Settlement in Liberalization Era Mumbai 208
Lisa Björkman

9 Building a "World Class Heritage City": Jaipur's Emergent Elites and the New Approach to Spatial Planning 241
Sanjeev Vidyarthi

10 Planning Mangalore: Garbage Collection in a Small Indian City 265
Neema Kudva

11 Comparative Perspectives on Urban Contestations: India and China 293
Gavin Shatkin

Index 311

"Each chapter is a brilliant incursion into one facet of "The Indian City" as presented in this book. Together the authors give us a refracted account of that complex condition that is a city. The chapters regularly seem to be in conversation with each other, an unusual achievement for a collection."
--Saskia Sassen, Columbia University, and author of Territory, Authority, Rights

"Global flows have created deep contestations and hybrid conditions in Indian cities that are often incomprehensible to planners and policy makers. This book offers a nuanced and scholarly reading of this complex landscape through examining 'potent samples' at all scales across a range of Indian cities. An extremely well timed book, given the intellectual void in the debate on contemporary Indian Cities."
--Rahul Mehrotra, Architect and Professor of Urban Design, Harvard University

Gavin Shatkin is Associate Professor at the School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs at Northeastern University. His research focuses on contemporary urban redevelopment practices in Asian cities, urban inequality, and community organizing and collective action around issues of shelter and infrastructure delivery. His book Collective Action and Urban Poverty Alleviation: Community Organizations and the Struggle for Shelter in Manila was published in 2007.

G. Shatkin, Northeastern University, USA