Mimicry, friction and trans-urban imaginaries: Mumbai taxis/Singapore-style

Tarini Bedi

Environment and Planning A, 2016, vol. 48, issue 6, 1012-1029

Abstract: As Mumbai globalizes, the city’s aesthetic, aspirational, and imaginative transformations draw from other commercial centers in Asia. Mumbai’s owner-operated and hereditary kaalipeeli (black and yellow) taxi-trade is being modeled along the lines of Singapore’s fleet-taxi industry. This paper focuses on the political and cultural transformations that accompany this ‘Singapore model’ as manifest in contemporary Mumbai’s taxi-trade. Through a discussion of taxi-modernization in Mumbai it highlights four dimensions of an “Asian mobilities†approach, namely an examination of: the movement of ideas and people; how ideas about moving people around spaces of Asian cities themselves move between different cities; how in turn imaginaries transform the lives of those who labor to move people about; and finally how new kinds of mobilities are constituted through frictions.

Keywords: Global cities; Asia; mobilities; labor; transport (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:envira:v:48:y:2016:i:6:p:1012-1029

DOI: 10.1177/0308518X15594803

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