Public space and citizenship in Mumbai

Tanu Sankalia

City, 2019, vol. 23, issue 3, 306-326

Abstract: Over the last few decades in Mumbai, incessant urbanization stimulated by flows of property capital has pushed government to privilege private development over public space. In this neoliberal context, citizens’ groups have pressured government to act in the public interest and led the charge to conserve public spaces in the city. This article examines the relationship between citizenship and city building in Mumbai by presenting two case studies of citizen action: the struggle over Land’s End and the making of the Bandra Bandstand promenade. It critically engages the expansive and divergent literature about the politics of the middle class in urban India and resists the tendency of characterizing this group as merely consumerist and anti-poor. The article argues that the roots of middle class involvement in Mumbai’s urban transformation goes back to the 1970s and beyond and posits that the politics and activism of numerous citizens’ groups builds on historical struggles for environmental and social justice in the city.

Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13604813.2019.1647707 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:taf:cityxx:v:23:y:2019:i:3:p:306-326

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/CCIT20

DOI: 10.1080/13604813.2019.1647707

Access Statistics for this article

City is currently edited by Bob Catterall

More articles in City from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().