Urban policy, and particularly, the knowledge base and fundamental assumptions behind the same have rarely been the subject of scholarship in India. As the urban becomes a significant phenomenon in India, however, several fundamental questions need to be debated as a guide to policy. Urban Parallax fills this lacuna by deconstructing urban policy and asking some critical questions about knowledge of the urban and of policy from multiple perspectives. Economists, sociologists, geographers, planners, and architects provide insight in this timely volume to foundational premises such as the relationship between urbanization and growth, its relationship with inequality, issues of centralization vs decentralization, the issue of differing scales of policy application, and when does policy seem to work and not work. An authoritative book by specialists, and yet accessible to every informed reader, this book will be of interest to policymakers, urban practitioners, scholars and students of urban studies and anthropology, as well as every concerned citizen of the Indian city--back cover.

Global in its outlook, this Research Agenda systematically reviews and critiques existing research on sustainable cities, calling for greater engagement with a diversity of perspectives. It interrogates foundational assumptions in the field and offers reframed perspectives on sustainability. Chapters also explore diverse approaches, actors and domains, locating emerging dynamics and new directions for practitioners.

This insightful book explores smaller towns and cities, places in which the majority of people live, highlighting that these more ordinary places have extraordinary geographies. It focuses on the development of an alternative approach to urban studies and theory that foregrounds smaller cities and towns rather than much larger cities and conurbations.

"Offers a much needed update on urban politics in a globalized world... Davidson and Martin, as well as contributors, chart new territory and produce thought-provoking research that move the field in a more critical direction" - Setha M. Low, The Graduate Center of the City University of New York "A critical analysis of power and politics is essential to an understanding of contemporary urbanism. Informative and challenging, clear and sophisticated, Urban Politics: Critical Approaches encourages readers to grapple with the great diversity of analytical lenses that frame urban political research through detailed, engaging case studies" - Eugene McCann, Simon Fraser University This critical, thought provoking discussion of contemporary urban politics places key issues in a geographical context. Divided into three sections: The urban as political setting The urban as political medium The urban as political community The text provides a thorough theoretical grounding with an extensive thematic overview. This unique approach links classical, institutional urban politics with a broader set of urban politics and practices. With case study material integrated throughout, and consideration given to the discussion of different urban politics from multiple theoretical perspectives, this is a completely up to date overview for students of urban geography, urban studies, urban sociology, and of course, urban politics.

This book offers an interdisciplinary and dynamic account of the politicization of urban planning in Mumbai, India. It presents a unique perspective on the tensions and conflicts pervading the development and regulation of contemporary cities in the wider context of global urbanization, and broadens readers’ understanding of urban planning, chiefly focusing on the interplay between grassroots movements, experts’ involvement, and sociotechnical questions. As the respective chapters of the book show, the various controversies surrounding the Mumbai Development Plan (MDP) have called into question the social and political effects of reshaping the city, the exclusion, and inequalities it has produced, but also the role it confers on the state and the market, and its impacts on the environment. After carefully describing these controversies, the book tackles the fundamental democratic question of who gets to define the future of a city. Given its scope, the book is of interest to researchers, students, and teachers of city planning, urban development, and urban studies, as well as policymakers.

An in-depth look at the distinctly different ways that China and India govern their cities and how this impacts their residents Urbanization is rapidly overtaking China and India, the two most populous countries in the world. One-sixth of humanity now lives in either a Chinese or Indian city. This transformation has unleashed enormous pressures on land use, housing, and the environment. Despite the stakes, the workings of urban governance in China and India remain obscure and poorly understood. In this book, Xuefei Ren explores how China and India govern their cities and how their different styles of governance produce inequality and exclusion. Drawing upon historical-comparative analyses and extensive fieldwork (in Beijing, Guangzhou, Wukan, Delhi, Mumbai, and Kolkata), Ren investigates the ways that Chinese and Indian cities manage land acquisition, slum clearance, and air pollution. She discovers that the two countries address these issues through radically different approaches. In China, urban governance centers on territorial institutions, such as hukou and the cadre evaluation system. In India, urban governance centers on associational politics, encompassing contingent alliances formed among state actors, the private sector, and civil society groups. Ren traces the origins of territorial and associational forms of governance to late imperial China and precolonial India. She then shows how these forms have evolved to shape urban growth and residents’ struggles today. As the number of urban residents in China and India reaches beyond a billion, Governing the Urban in China and India makes clear that the development of cities in these two nations will have profound consequences well beyond their borders.