Landscapes of Disaster: Water, Modernity, and Urban Fragmentation in Mumbai

Matthew Gandy
Additional contact information
Matthew Gandy: Department of Geography, University College London, 26 Bedford Way, London WC1H 0AP, England

Environment and Planning A, 2008, vol. 40, issue 1, 108-130

Abstract: The city of Mumbai is undergoing a complex social, economic, and political transition into an increasingly fragmentary and polarized metropolitan space. The tortuous flow of water through contemporary Mumbai presents one of the most striking indicators of persistent social inequalities within the postcolonial metropolis. We find that the city's dysfunctional water infrastructure has its roots within the colonial era but these incipient weaknesses have been exacerbated in recent years by rapid urban growth, authoritarian forms of political mobilization, and the dominance of middle-class interests within a denuded public realm. It is argued that the water and sanitation crisis facing Mumbai needs to be understood in relation to the particularities of capitalist urbanization and state formation in an Indian context.

Date: 2008
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (15)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1068/a3994 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:envira:v:40:y:2008:i:1:p:108-130

DOI: 10.1068/a3994

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Environment and Planning A
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().