Full Description
This book provides an important account of how the city in South Asia is produced, lived and contested. It examines the diverse lived experiences of urban South Asia through a focus on contestations over urban space, resources and habitation, bringing together accounts from India, Pakistan, Nepal and Sri Lanka. In contrast to accounts that attribute urban transformation mainly to neoliberal globalisation, this book vividly demonstrates how neoliberalism functions as one of the many drivers of urban change.
This edited volume brings together an interdisciplinary and international range of established and emerging scholars working on the city in South Asia. To date, South Asian urban studies privilege a handful of cities, particularly in India, overlooking the great diversity, as well as commonalities, of urban experiences spanning the region. Thus, in addition to chapters on New Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore, this volume contains critical urban chapters on less-studied cities such as Lahore, Islamabad, Kathmandu, Colombo and Dhaka. The volume insists that a fresh look at contemporary changes in cities in South Asia requires careful consideration of the specificity of the city, as well as a comparative perspective. It provides a sense not only of the new forms of urbanism emerging in contemporary South Asia, but also sheds light on new theoretical possibilities and directions to make sense of transnational processes and urban change.
Contents
Introduction: Conceptualising the City in South Asia Jonathan Shapiro Anjaria and Colin McFarlane Part I: Contested Landscapes 1. The Nuisance of Slums: Environmental Law and the Production of Slum Illegality in India D. Asher Ghertner 2. Poverty as Geography: Motility, Stoppage and Circuits of Waste in Delhi Vinay Gidwani and Bharati Chaturvedi 3. Shillong: The (Un)Making of a North-East Indian City? Daisy Hasan 4. The Divided City? Squatters' Struggle for Urban Space in Kathmandu Urmi Sengupta 5. Spectacular Events, City Spaces and Citizenship: The Commonwealth Games in Delhi Amita Baviskar Part II: Infrastructures and Materialities 6. The Embeddedness of Cost Recovery: Water Reforms and Associationism at Bangalore's Fringes Malini Ranganathan 7. Ignoring Power: Knowing Leakage in Mumbai's Water Supply Nikhil Anand 8. 'No Horn Please': Self-Governance and Sociality in a Kathmandu Housing Colony Andrew Nelson 9. Housing Complexes as Packaged Fantasies: A Meeting of the Local and the Global and the Standardisation of Taste in Colombo Sasanka Perera Part III: Imagining the Urban 10. Sri Lanka: Terror, Anxiety and the Unstable Nation — A Physical Biography of Violence Anoma Pieris 11. City of Lights: Nostalgia, Violence and Karachi's Competing Imaginaries Huma Yusuf 12. Sacrifice and Dystopia: Imagining Karachi through Edhi Yasmin Jaffri and Oskar Verkaaik . About the Editors. Note on the Contributors. Index.
