Articles selected from the Institute's quarterly journal.

Stories of Innovation, Inclusion, Sustainability and Smartness

This substantive and original contribution to the study of urbanization in India critically analyses the strengths and weaknesses of the Indian urban system and provides new insights into contemporary urban problems. The author's perspective of urban development in India interrelates the geographical dimension with historical and socio-economic aspects. The book focuses on the processes of urbanization and the nature of interdependence among urban centres and between urban centres and their hinterlands. The approach is at the macro level. The first chapter provides an overview of studies of urbanization in India, and a detailed chapter on the history of urbanization follows. These provide the necessary background to the chapter on urbanization processes. The locational aspects of urbanization are covered in the next five chapters which discuss the problem of defining an urban place, spatial patterns of urbanization, classification of cities, theories of settlement location and the analysis of settlement systems. The relationships between a city and its surrounding area are then studied at two levels - the larger area of city dominance and the city fringe area. Finally, the author examines the fundamental issues involved in framing a national urbanization policy, and expresses the hope that the development of smaller cities and towns may provide some relief from the problems of overcrowding and unplanned growth.

Study of municipal government, chiefly in Bhubaneswar, Orissa.

Through the analysis of Indian metropolises, this volume critiques the reality of “entrepreneurial governance” that has emerged as a major urban development practice in cities of the global south. In neoliberal India, the use of management rhetoric in urban development has rapidly led to the growth of urban/peri-urban structures and spaces that are supposedly “smart” and “entrepreneurial”, which are networked within global systems of production, finance, technology/ telecommunication, culture and politics. Through diverse empirical evidence from India, particularly from the metropolises of New Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Chennai, this volume focuses on the fallout of the deployment of “entrepreneurial governance” practices at national, state and local levels. Foremost, it explores the impact of specific institutional and organizational reorientations and changing urban spatial landscapes at the local level; secondly, it discusses the socio-economic implications of rollback of the state and involvement of non-state organizations in governance as part of urban entrepreneurialism; further, it discusses the regulation of urban development projects by local governments and the impact of "entrepreneurial governance" for citizens, often resulting in social exclusion and inequality. Finally, it explores the inherent contradictions within political and institutional landscapes that can be described as “entrepreneurial”. Written by scholars from diverse disciplinary backgrounds, and focusing on different facets of entrepreneurial governance in Indian metropolises, this book is of interest to researchers of urban politics, public policy, urban sociology, anthropology, urban geography, planning and architecture.

While participatory development has gained significance in urban planning and policy, it has been explored largely from the perspective of its prescriptive implementation. This book breaks new ground in critically examining the intended and unintended effects of the deployment of citizen participation and public consultation in neoliberal urban governance by the Indian state. The book reveals how emerging formats of participation, as mandatory components of infrastructure projects, public–private partnership proposals and national urban governance policy frameworks, have embedded market-oriented reforms, promoted financialisation of cities, refashioned urban citizenship, privileged certain classes in urban governance at the expense of already marginalised ones, and thereby deepened the fragmentation of urban polities. It also shows how such deployments are rooted in the larger political economy of neoliberal reforms and ascendance of global finance, and how resultant exclusions and fractures in the urban society provoke insurgent mobilisations and subversions. Offering a dialogue between scholars, policy-makers and activists, and drawing upon several case studies of urban development projects across sectors and cities, this volume will be useful for planners, policy-makers, academics, development professionals, social workers and activists, as well as those in urban studies, urban policy/planning, political science, sociology and development studies.