Beyond the Metropolis: Production of Global Built Environments in India

• In Event: 1451 - Community and Urban Sociology Section Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: 18. Urban Development

Abstract

Since the 1990s, accelerated urbanization has been transforming the peripheries of Indian cities. In this context, urban scholars have studied the conversion of agrarian lands into urban-industrial landscapes and the dispossession of agricultural workers. My paper builds on this conversation and explains the conditions and contours of development in Hinjewadi, which is an emerging suburb of Pune—a medium-sized city in Western India. In my analysis, I employ the framework of “fixes” to explain the peri-urban development in India. On the one hand, the “spatial fix” is implemented through Special Economic Zones and industrial corridors which helps explain the commodification of land for urban use. On the other, the “technological fix” is accomplished through investment in Information Technology, which highlights the role of Pune in the global economy. This paper demonstrates the ways in which these two neoliberal strategies congeal in the Integrated Township at Hinjewadi where luxurious gated communities built for the globally mobile middle classes meet software companies working for their clients in the US and Europe. I show that while the Information Technology Park in Hinjewadi, Pune, connects vertically to Euro-American cities in an economically subordinate role, it simultaneously creates a horizontally similar place of luxurious gated communities where a Euro-American lifestyle can be consumed by the emerging Indian middle classes. The outcome of this global process is a globalizing city, Pune, which in turn marked by socio-spatial inequality and segregation.

Author

• Apurva Apurva, Binghamton University