ISSN (Print) - 0012-9976 | ISSN (Online) - 2349-8846

Articles by Loraine KennedySubscribe to Loraine Kennedy

Greenfield Development as Tabula Rasa

Greenfield urban development can be seen as an enduring idiom of politics in India, with state initiative from precolonial times to the present day responsible for establishing iconic capital cities such as Jaipur, Kolkata, or Chandigarh. However, a renewed interest in building new cities, variously labelled "smart," "green" or "integrated," is now accompanied by an increasing tendency to instrumentalise the urban in pursuit of economic growth and a competitive drive to attract global financial flows. Situated at the intersection of several recent literatures from speculative urbanism to theorisations of rescaling and bypass, the papers in this special issue foreground the struggles over land that animate debates about these greenfield sites while looking beyond these concerns to question the urban futures they presage. Synthesising the insights from these papers, this essay flags critical issues for the politics of urban development and sketches pathways for future research.

The Shift to City-Centric Growth Strategies: Perspectives from Hyderabad and Mumbai

There is growing recognition on the part of policymakers that cities play a crucial role in the national economy, and current policies mark a significant rupture from those followed over the years. Based on two compelling, though not fully comparable, case studies of Hyderabad and Mumbai, this article argues that both the union and state governments are adopting city-centric growth strategies, following international trends, and that these have far-reaching social and spatial implications in terms of governance. The policy shift calls for a serious re-examination of intergovernmental responsibilities, functions and financial transfers in order to ensure that the larger social issues are included in city strategic planning. In both cities, the ongoing processes are contentious and contradictory, providing a stark contrast to the smooth vision statements that convey an image of the quest for "development" as a consensual process.

Globalisation of Finance and Economic Reforms

Economic Reforms Loraine Kennedy The extension of finance-related activities from a national to a global setting and its impact on the global economy, and on particular types of economies was the theme of a recent colloquium.

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