Chronicles of a Global City
Speculative Lives and Unsettled Futures in Bengaluru
Michael Goldman editor Carol Upadhya editor Vinay Gidwani editor
Format:Hardback
Publisher:University of Minnesota Press
Publishing:19th Nov '24
£89.00
This title is due to be published on 19th November, and will be despatched as soon as possible.
Tracking Bengaluru’s dramatic urban transformation through the entanglements of finance, land frenzy, real estate volatility, and livelihood upheavals
Over the past two decades, Bengaluru’s exploding real estate sector and massive infrastructure investments have led to land speculation targeting working-class neighborhoods and agricultural land for development. Chronicles of a Global City turns Bengaluru inside out to examine its “world-city” transformation that stimulated rapid urbanization and unbounded growth. Moving the spotlight away from the urban elites and “new middle class,” this book explores how people caught up in the whirlwinds of change in Bengaluru—from construction laborers, street vendors, domestic workers, and platform delivery workers to small-time property brokers, petty landlords, and local politicians—experience, struggle, aspire, invent, strive, and speculate to make a livable city for themselves.
Grounded in long-term ethnographic research and activist experiences, Chronicles of a Global City vividly illuminates the multifaceted entanglements of finance capital, real estate markets, livelihood struggles, and fraying ecologies in urban and peri-urban Bengaluru. Its anchoring concept, “speculative urbanism,” provides a powerful, innovative lens for understanding the risk-laden practices of leveraging land, labor, and resources for the promise of future profit.
Contributors: Hemangini Gupta, Pierre Hauser, Priyanka Krishna, Eesha Kunduri, Kaveri Medappa, Usha Rao, Shaheen Shasa, Swathi Shivanand, Vinay K. Sreenivasa.
ISBN: 9781517917357
Dimensions: 216mm x 140mm x 15mm
Weight: 454g
280 pages