Transport Systems in Bombay/Mumbai

Geoforum, 2008

This paper is an examination of the splintering urbanism argument of the relationship between neo-liberal reforms of infrastructure networks and urban cohesion. Based on an analysis of historical and contemporary processes of infrastructure provision (water, sewerage and power) in colonial/post-colonial Bombay/Mumbai, it questions the assumption of a ''modern infrastructure ideal" in the context of developing cities. In Mumbai, the historical analysis reveals the contradictions between this ideal and a hierarchical society. From the outset, access to services (particularly water and sewerage) was highly distorted in favour of the elites, even though utilities networks contributed to urban integration through cross-subsidies within and across sectors, and through the setting up of municipal institutions. Second, ongoing sectoral reforms demonstrate contrasting trends as increased differentiation of services produces both positive -better adaptation to users' needs -and potentially negative -fragmentingsocio-spatial implications. Third, an understudied potential fragmenting threat also lies in the sectoral approach to reforms as it undermines the existing crosssector subsidies and prevents the articulation of utility reforms with other limiting factors, such as land and transport, which are the main constraints for expanding housing and mobility in the city.

2005

This comparative paper investigaces access to che city by underprivileged social groups in the context of twO spatially and s~cially segmented metropolises, Cape Town and Delhi, and reflects on the question of urban fragmentation and urbanity. The notion of urban fragmentation has been debated in the social sciences since the 1980s. In its most extreme form, urban fragmentation implies an 'absolute-break between the differentparts of the city, in its social, economic and poli tical dimensions' (Gervais-Lambony, 2001, p. 35).' As highlighted by Navez-Bouchanine, the implicit understanding of fragmentation in urban situations: [E]stabIishes a link berween, on the one hand, the spatial dynamics related co the process of metropoIizaüon and globalization (urban sprawl, mobiliry), and, on the other, the process of breaking up of urban social uniry, as the result of an extreme diversification of urban practices and references. the increasing social inequalities, the socioeconomic mechanism of exclusion and modes of social solidariry dissociation which are favoured by spatial break up. (2001, p. 109) Yet, she concludes her review with a caveat that: a broken up urban landscape does not necessarily imply a fragmented urban society (p. 114). In the late 1960s Henri Lefèvbre (968) and the French neo-Marxist school (Castells, 1981; Lipietz, 1977) argued that the spatial organization of the city was the projection on the ground of social and class relationships. This analysis has been refined in order to interpret better the complexity of socio-spatial urban structures and divisions,

2003

According to the provisional results of the 2001 Census of India the population of India has passed the one billion mark with a sharp decline from its decadal growth rate of 21.34 per cent over the last five decades. The urban population constitutes 27.8 per cent of the total, with a decadal growth rate of 31.2 per cent. The level of urbanisation is 2.1 per cent higher than in 1991. The density of population has increased steadily from 117 persons per km in 1951 to 324 persons per km in 2001. Urban agglomerations or cities with a population of more than one million have increased from 22 in 1991 to 35 in 2001 with Greater Mumbai being the largest at 16.4 million. The Mumbai Metropolitan Region is the largest urban agglomeration in the country. For the first time detailed data on slum areas in the country have been collected in the 2001 census. The total slum population in the country is 40.3 million comprising 22.6 percent of the total urban population of the towns which reported sl...

IAFOR Journal of Arts & Humanities, 2017

Cities in India are transforming rapidly. While there is considerable variation in the level of transformation among the various cities, metropoles like Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai are witnessing the most significant changes as they navigate their way into the exacting networks of the global economy. These transformations are not apolitical in nature, but rather respond to societal imperatives that are compliant with the requirements of the middle class, the class that occupies dominant city spaces. Consequently, urban transformations embody the particular perspectives of the dominant class. The post-economic liberalisation period has seen significant shifts in the way Indian cities are planned and structured. There has been, for instance, a gradual increase in exclusionary city spaces and gated enclaves. Development plans justify these transformations by claiming that they comply broadly and comprehensively with people's aspirations and therefore reflect a homogenous and uncontested imagery of the city. But are these visions really homogenous? Do alternate city visions exist? Do urban transformations actually silence alternate visions and result in suppressed assumptions and a discordant urban culture? If so, what is the nature of this divisiveness? Is it restricted to physical segregation or is it expressed at subtler levels in the urban social fabric? This article is the synthesis of an ethnographic study, undertaken in the rapidly transforming metropolis of Delhi, India, that addresses these questions; it also aims to challenge development plans that project a homogeneous idea of the city that is questionable at best. Moreover, it explores alternate visions, that is to say, visions emanating from below, from the urban poor's desires regarding the spaces around them.

Sociological Bulletin, 2018

The article engages with the literature that has emerged since the 1990s in urban studies in India and in this context, discusses the nature of India’s urban modernity. It suggests that scholars in India participate and engage with the global discussion on urban studies by removing themselves from the epistemic confusions of colonial episteme and of methodological nationalism that has bound sociology in India. It suggests that contemporary processes of capitalism have enveloped the entire territory of the country into an urban space with the mobile upper classes termed ‘middle classes’ and the state policies linking unevenly the so-called rural and urban areas through new forms of capitalist accumulation. These organise specific patterns of spatial inequalities and exclusions and in turn fuel contradictory processes of politics relating to gender, caste, ethnicity and religiosities. The focus of the urban studies should be to analyse the way the global intersects with regions and lo...

Urbanisation is an inevitable outcome of a growing economy. Slowly more and more people are becoming residents of urban areas. Cities provide opportunities to many and aspire them to venture in different undertakings in a rapidly globalising nation. Cities are becoming sites of massive economic interactions and changes. But how these changes are impacting people is a question that needs close scrutiny. It is pertinent to ask why poverty persists along with a higher growth rate as well as urbanisation and visibly better livelihoods of people.

Though Karachi has its specifities, it is, like other urban centres, a built environment of concentrated accumulation: of labour, capital and culture. Its intersections, inequalities and interactions are continually being rendered concrete and therefore reveal the antecedents of history. As such, Karachi’s transition from 18th century provincial fishing port to multi-layered ‘mega-city’ cannot be disentangled from the latest epoch of global capitalism and imperialism: the engines of ’uneven geographic development’. These hegemonic ideologies have engendered a process of ‘planetary urbanisation’, whereby cities of production and consumption have been restructured, and integrated into a hierarchical global order . More recently, Karachi’s financial sector has been territorialised through a burgeoning ‘landscape of power’, in order to reproduce and restructure the city as a competitor in the capitalist world order. Sites such as these inscribe the socio-spatial histories and processes of the city and beyond. We must consequently follow Lefebvre’s lead to understand their growth and ask how were these spaces produced? Why were they produced? And who produced them? We explore these questions using Soja’s conception of a socio-spatial dialectic whereby macro-level socio-spatial relations guide the production of spaces, but these spaces continue to be navigated and conditioned by non-hegemonic actors.