Luca Pattaroni, Amita Bhide, Christine Lutringer. Presentation of the book “Politics of Urban Planning: The Making and Unmaking of the Mumbai Development Plan 2014–2034”, 29.09.2022, 5:30PM-7:15PM

Sciences Po, Online via Zoom*, Compulsory registration

This book offers an interdisciplinary and dynamic account of the politicization of urban planning in Mumbai, India. It presents a in-depth perspective on the tensions and conflicts pervading the development and regulation of contemporary cities in the wider context of planetary urbanization, and broadens readers’ understanding of urban planning, chiefly focusing on the interplay between grassroots movements, experts’ involvement, and sociotechnical questions. As the respective chapters of the book show, the various controversies surrounding the Mumbai Development Plan (MDP) have called into question the social and political effects of reshaping the city, the exclusion, and inequalities it has produced, but also the role it confers on the state and the market, and its impacts on the environment. After carefully describing these controversies, the book tackles the fundamental democratic question of who gets to define the future of a city.

Speakers

Luca Pattaroni, Maître d’Enseignement et de Recherche at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL).

Luca Pattaroni is Maître d’Enseignement et de Recherche at the Laboratory of Urban Sociology of EPFL where he leads the research group « Urban Hospitalities ». His work is concerned with the expression of differences and the making of the common in contemporary cities.

Amita Bhide, Professor at School of Habitat Studies at Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai.

Amita Bhide has been engaged in teaching at the Institute for over twenty-eight years. A former faculty in the School of Social Work in the Department of Urban and Rural Community Development, she has been deeply involved in issues related to urban poor communities, community organization, housing rights movements and advocacy groups and has undertaken research projects linked to these subjects. She is the recipient of the Inaugural fellowship of the India China Institute on New School University, New York. Professor Bhide’s recent work at the School of Habitat Studies has been on urban governance reforms, housing informality, water- sanitation and land issues with a focus on small and medium towns in Maharashtra. Participatory, engendered local governance is a key area of her interest.

Christine Lutringer, Executive Director and Senior Researcher at the Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva.

Christine Lutringer is trained in political science and international history. She studied in Strasbourg (Institut d’études politiques), Rome (Sapienza University and LUISS) and Geneva at the Graduate Institute. From 2010 to 2016 she was researcher and lecturer with the Institute for Area and Global Studies at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) in Lausanne. Her work explores democratic practices in the context of the mobilisation of new social and political actors. In particular it examines social movements and their influence on democratic politics and policy-making.

Discussant
Sukriti Issar, Associate Professor of Sociology, Centre de Recherche sur les Inégalités Sociales (CRIS), Sciences Po

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For more information: citiesarebackintown@sciencespo.fr

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