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- Convenors:
-
Tanya Jakimow
(Australian National University)
Ramaswami Harindranath (UNSW Sydney)
Send message to Convenors
- Format:
- Paper panel
- Stream:
- Embedding justice in development
- Location:
- S118
- Sessions:
- Thursday 27 June, -, -, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
New cities/towns built ‘from scratch’ have emerged as a solution to the strains of urban growth globally. This panel will explore the potential for ‘new cities’ to ameliorate or perpetuate social injustice and examine how these experiments in urban development have played out in mature cities
Long Abstract:
Cities across Asia, Africa and Latin America are experiencing massive strains on infrastructure as a result of population growth and insufficient state investment (Dey et al. 2013; Low 2018). Consequences include a diminishing standard of living for denizens, and below optimal efficiency for industry. One response to these problems is the development of so-called ‘New Towns’ or ‘Cities-from-scratch’ (Bhattacharya and Sanyal 2011). Corporate entities and/or governments develop land on the outskirts of ‘mega-cities’, transforming agricultural landscapes into urban environments with ‘world class facilities’ and global ambitions. As a relatively recent phenomenon, however, much remains unknown as to the consequences of these experiments in urban development.
The main focus of this panel is on the potential for ‘new cities’ to ameliorate or perpetuate social injustice. We invite papers that further extend understandings of the processes of land acquisition and planning, with attention to how these contribute to erasures and/or privileging. We are particularly keen to build upon knowledge on ‘new cities’ as ‘speculative urbanism’ (van Leynseele, and Bontje 2019; Moser and Côté-Roy 2021) to see how these experiments have played out in reality. To this end, we seek papers that provide accounts of the lived experiences of people living and/or working in, and around, new cities and towns that have reached a level of maturity. The aim is to collectively develop analytical frameworks to understand and evaluate the potential of ‘cities-from-scratch’ as a more (or less) socially just urban environment, and establish a body of evidence to guide future developments.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 27 June, 2024, -Martin Murray (University of Michigan)
Paper short abstract:
I would like to participate in a critical evaluation of new models of city building in urban Africa, and their impacts on social injustice and exclusion.
Paper long abstract:
The unprecedented scale and scope of urbanization in Africa has gone hand-in-hand with the emergence of new master-planned, holistically designed, and private managed cities built on the edges of existing urban agglomerations. What distinguishes these new city-building projects from earlier iterations of urbanization in Africa is that they have been constructed entirely from scratch, rather than retrofitting or rebuilding existing urban landscapes. These master-planned, holistically designed, and privately managed cities offer the advantage of starting fresh, with up-to-date infrastructure and the imposition of top-down urban management systems that enforce rules and regulations that outlaw informal trading, overcrowded streetscapes, and irregular housing. One particular corporate enterprise, Rendeavour, has taken an over-sized role in this novel approach to city building in urban Africa. This private company has started at least five new city-building projects in urban Africa (Nairobi, Abuja, Lusaka, Accra, Lubumbashi), with several more in the pipeline. In constructing these new master-planned satellite cities, Rendeavour has followed a standardized formula, blending mixed-use elements (under the mantra “live, work, and play”) with a business model that stresses private enterprise over everything else. Exploring the Rendeavour projects enables us to assess the impact of new city building through the eyes of one company.
Tanya Jakimow (Australian National University)
Paper short abstract:
A feminist reading of a mature ‘city-from-scratch’ reveals gendered and classed possibilities for personhood. Middle-class women—addressed as an appendage to male professionals—carve out new freedoms within and through the city’s boundaries. In contrast, village women self-imaginaries are unrealised
Paper long abstract:
Established in 2002, Mahindra World City, Chennai (MWCC) is a mature ‘city from scratch’ in Tamil Nadu, India. Middle-class enclaves co-exist with villages, the occupants of which were promised utopian futures from proximity to a world class city in exchange for land and agrarian livelihoods. MWCC is promoted as ‘India’s first integrated City’ combining the economic benefits of city living (livelihood), alongside infrastructural (living), cultural and social (life) benefits. The addressee in MWCC’s vision is the male middle-class professional worker, promised career opportunities, world class facilities and peace of mind for his family. This gendered lens reflects the masculine/heteronormative bias in urban planning and architecture: a lens also informing the design and study of ‘cities from scratch’.
In this feminist reading of MWCC, we examine the possibilities for women who live in and around the city. ‘Freedom’ afforded by mobility, safety and infrastructure has led to new self-imaginings for ‘middle-class’ women. Their experiences provide a stark view of how Indian cities and urban centres inhibit and constrain women, including those who are relatively affluent. Yet the possibilities for realising new self-imaginaries are deeply classed. Village women have modelled themselves as ‘subjects’ for the new city, ready and qualified to take on the opportunities the city provides. Companies and apartment dwellers hold different perceptions of villagers’ aspirations, positioning them as subjects of cheap, unskilled and disposable labour. Structural and spatial conditions make future imaginaries of self (almost) impossible for village women, betraying the promises of MWCC for its displaced inhabitants.
Baiju Thankachan (Indian Institute of Technology Madras)
Paper short abstract:
Sriperumbudur rose to unprecedented growth in two decades, earning the title 'Detroit of India'. Meanwhile, for the local Dalit population, development was shown as hope for a better life, turned into a nightmare of survival, fear, losing their land, and resources and living in a life of precarity.
Paper long abstract:
"We were happy when these buildings came up, and now it is our nightmare," said an elderly man in Katchipattu village. In less than two decades, Periurban, Sriperumbudur, transformed from a rural area to an SEZ and a satellite town. With more than five hundred companies, industries, real estate and public and private infrastructures grew unprecedentedly, earning the title 'Detroit of India'. This town came up to alleviate the pressure of Chennai city's limited space and industrial expansion. While periurban dynamics is much talked about, the life of local communities is neglected in mainstream discussion, particularly of marginalized people, particularly Dalits. Industries and infrastructures bypass the Dalit population of Katchipattu, restricting their free and easy mobility around. Their traditional agrarian jobs disappeared, their lands were encroached on and taken away, and natural resources were depleted and contaminated, making life a living hell. For the youth, the only option for survival was illegal means of work, earning them the title 'criminal village' and poramboke (the outsider). Despite the development, caste discrimination and alienation of Dalits were very much prevalent. Their identity as Dalits and criminals denied them jobs in industries; meanwhile, they are used for menial, illegal and less dignified jobs that involve high risk by the police, industries and influential individuals, resulting in their arrest, jail terms and even death. The life of the Katchipattu community is an everyday tale of precarity, risk, fear and survival.
Ramaswami Harindranath (UNSW Sydney)
Paper short abstract:
Tracking the development of a city from scratch allows the exploration of diverse forms of urban ‘scripting’ that reveal the priorities of state and private sector actors as well as denizens and workers. Building on radical conceptions of ‘space’, this paper develops a complex analytical framework.
Paper long abstract:
Mahindra World City in Chennai (MWCC) embodies the diverse dimensions that typically constitute cities from scratch in postcolonial regions, combining public-private partnerships, complex governance structures, special economic zones, and the urban-rural palimpsest. Such developments almost invariably require repurposing land, often agricultural land that supports local cultural economies. While extant research quite rightly emphasises ‘appropriation’ and ‘dispossession’ as critical concepts to explore the power dynamics that underlie such processes, this paper argues for a more complex analytical framework. Developments such as MWCC offer the opportunity to study multiple forms of ‘scripting’ (Fincher, et al 2002), from urbanisation and its impact on rural lives, to state policies, urban design, ‘zoning’, and transnational flows of capital. Drawing from the radical reconceptualisations of space such as Harvey’s (2006) tripartite classification of absolute, relative and relational space and Massey’s (1992) notion of power geometry, this paper explores ways to enrich existing critical frames.
Aditi Pradhan (Jawaharlal Nehru University)
Paper short abstract:
How the Old City of Ahmedabad's exclusionary practices and segregation patterns not only persist but intensify in the New City of Ahmedabad? It challenges the myth of a progressive, inclusive New Ahmedabad, exposing the hidden structures that perpetuate social divisions within its gleaming walls.
Paper long abstract:
Ahmedabad, the largest city in the state of Gujarat, took a giant leap towards modernity and urban transformation to situate itself on the global map as a ‘Global City’. The reigns of rulers belonging to different religions and the peopling of the city during those reigns had made the Old Ahmedabad city’s composition quite variegated, both on caste and religious lines. Therefore, the segregation based on caste and religion has been a persisting characteristic of Ahmedabad. The New City of Ahmedabad, guided by neoliberal ideals of planning and governance strategies based on free-market principles, promised to lessen such inequalities. However, critics point to a different outcome: amplified socio-spatial segregation and new forms of exclusion, a trend prevalent in many cities of the global south. The New City of Ahmedabad embodies this paradox. The very decision to reside here hinges on one's caste and religion. Gates, walls and security mechanisms restrict movement, creating insular communities with limited interaction. This isolation fosters "othering," amplifying the sense of separation and minimizing intermingling. Modernity's veneer fails to mask the underlying prejudice, perpetuating biases in these supposedly progressive spaces. This research delves into this troubling paradox: how old patterns of exclusion from Ahmedabad's past find potent new expressions in the heart of its supposed modern future.
Eka Permanasari (Monash University, Indonesia)
Paper short abstract:
This paper investigates the masterplan for the new capital city of Indonesia, Kalimantan (Nusantara), and how it constructs new narratives for Indonesian national identity.
Paper long abstract:
This paper investigates the masterplan for the new capital city of Indonesia, Kalimantan (Nusantara), and how it constructs new narratives for Indonesian national identity. It investigates the controversy surrounding the decision, design, meanings, and functions of the new capital complex, including the attempt to leave the current troubled capital city of Jakarta. The paper examines the symbolism of building a smart and sustainable Nusantara as a new dream for postcolonial Indonesia. The paper begins with a literature review on the history of the creation and recreation of national identity in the postcolonial nations, followed by a discussion on how architecture and urban design convey specific meaning in relation to the formation of new national identity and its symbolic significance, as well as an examination of the potential effects of this decision on the local population, economy, and environment. This research decodes the narrative symbolism of the new Indonesian capital through visual analysis of the existing masterplan and archival research through review of public and professional opinion.
Wasisto Jati
Paper short abstract:
“Nusantara” would be the first planned capital city in Indonesia with numerous supporting systems like integrated eco-friendly transportation and integrated government complex and housings. It also highlights spirit “city for all” that means inclusiveness among residents especially both migrants and
Paper long abstract:
“Nusantara” would be the first planned capital city in Indonesia with numerous supporting systems like integrated eco-friendly transportation and integrated government complex and housings. It also highlights spirit “city for all” that means inclusiveness among residents especially both migrants and native locals, “forest city” that promotes equality between residents and its surrounding natures, and “smart city” that encourages advanced e-government system.
However, those urban policy paradigms seem to face disruptions, particularly from potential nature and social disasters. Droughts, bushfire, and landslide will be potentially appearing as the new Indonesian capital city project consumes more land from its neighbouring cities and regencies. It alters the spatial plans from those regions that might cause a nature environment for the new capital city. In addition, the displaced indigenous people from their ancestral land, because of capital city projects, would give unintended consequences for assimilation between locals and migrants. The increasing migrants would shift locals away from their home. This would be social frictions. More importantly, the land possession is a sensitive issue in Kalimantan since many corporates compete for the mining industry.
This study aims to investigate the policy challenges of upcoming new Indonesian capital city should deal with. Drawing data from both spatial and in-depth interviews with various actors, especially locals, during fieldwork in mid 2021 and 2022. Obviously, both nature and social disasters basically result from rush development processes that are not engaged with the local aspirations.
keywords: Nusantara; New Indonesian Capital City; Natural Disasters; Social Disasters
Rachel Parker (University of Leeds)
Paper short abstract:
This paper will explore the tentative dynamics surrounding the realisation of these ambitious developments due to their interconnected and temporal nature being highly dependent on the political ideology, social networks, and flows of capital of elite actors.
Paper long abstract:
This paper will present findings from case studies that focus on ambitious real estate developments from diverse global contexts, which were intended to be globally significant. The Royal Albert Docks Business Hub development, in London, and the Kigamboni Satellite City Development, in Dar es Salaam. The developments focused on within these case studies are particularly interesting as they both experienced difficulties in their realisation. Thus, this paper will offer insight into underlying dynamics and difficulties concerning speculative urbanism informed by the different global contexts of the UK and Tanzania. The particular focus of this paper will be the impact of informal practices of the elite on envisioning and striving towards ambitious real estate developments, particularly in relation to the interconnected and temporal nature of this group’s political ideology, social networks and flows of capital, with the convergence of these significantly impacting whether ambitious developments are realised. Therefore, this paper will contribute to understanding the informal practices of elite actors that underpin these projects, in addition to further understanding processes of speculative urbanism. Furthermore, this paper will contend that it is not only the realisation of these projects that impacts wider societies but also their envisioning and promotion by elite actors.
Sarah Moser (McGill University)
Paper short abstract:
This paper investigates the geographies of exclusion that have resulted from a master-planned capital city project, which exemplifies Oren Yiftachel's framework of the 'dark side of planning', developed to theorize the role of planning in the marginalization of Palestinians by the Israeli state.
Paper long abstract:
In 1999, Putrajaya replaced Kuala Lumpur as the administrative capital of Malaysia. The ex nihilo master-planned city was designed strategically to project an ‘authentic’ Muslim identity and recover a sense of pre-colonial Malay dominance. Secular government buildings feature arches and domes inspired by the ‘great’ Islamic civilizations, while bridges, sidewalks, and fountains are decorated with recognizably Islamic ornamentation. Putrajaya has several mega-mosques located in highly visible places in the city that were built with state support, as well as two dozen mosques and suraus. In contrast, Hindus, Buddhists, and Christians, who constitute over 40% of Malaysia’s population, have neither formal religious amenities such as places of worship nor symbolic representation in civic architecture. In the context of rising Islamism and widespread affirmative action policies designed to address enduring inequalities experienced by Malays, this paper investigates how and why Putrajaya was conceived as an ‘Islamic city’ in the 1990s, and to what effect. It critically examines the various mechanisms used to ‘Islamicize’ the capital and tracks the over 20-year struggle of Putrajaya’s small Hindu community to establish a national temple in the city.
Gideon Baffoe (University of York)
Paper short abstract:
African cities have embraced rapid physical transformation as the default urban development paradigm. Using Kigali as a case study, this study investigates the extent to which land expropriation perpetuates marginalization and social injustice.
Paper long abstract:
In a bid to become global cities and centers of innovation, many African cities have embraced rapid physical transformation as the default urban development paradigm. However, this development mantra is happening at a huge social cost. Underlying the physical transformation is land expropriation, which gives governments the power to accumulate lands in the name of public interest. There is a lacuna on how expropriation affects the livelihood and assets of the urban poor, particularly in the African context. Using Kigali as a case study and drawing on livelihood asset framework and snowballing sampling technique, this study investigates the extent to which land expropriation perpetuates marginalization and social injustice. Preliminary results show that expropriation dispossesses people of their main productive livelihood assets: physical, financial and social assets, which puts them in a state of impoverishment and marginalization. Expropriation, the study revealed, has significant socio-economic impacts, and addressing these would require integrated and multifaced measures, including providing just compensation, alternative livelihood options, promoting participatory planning, and facilitating capital acquisition for small-scale business ventures.
Sheng Xuan (Durham University)
Paper short abstract:
China has become a major sponsor for urban projects in Africa. With the Case of a China led greenfield urban projects in Mauritius, this research will illustrate to what extent, urban life, power relationship, and social justice could be influenced by foreign sponsored urban speculation.
Paper long abstract:
In recent decades, to mitigate pressures created during rapid urbanisation or to fulfil ‘urban fantasy’, cities in the Global South places great hopes in international resources. Meanwhile, the global presence of China is increasing in scale, visibility, and diversity as a result of China’s ‘Going Out’ policy and Belt and Road Initiative. Via an array of spectacular urban projects, inform of ‘New Towns’ or ‘Smart Cities’, China has become a main sponsor in urban Africa settings. Though some projects are widely discussed, exactly how urban life and social justice in recipient countries influenced by resources and policies from China is still seldom explored in greater detail. Both ‘debt traps’ myth of Chinese projects and South-South Cooperation narratives over-simplified the topics, and more careful empirical examination on the ground are demanded. This research advances an in-depth qualitative study of the JinFei Smart City in Mauritius, a relatively long-term, high-profile greenfield urban development undertaken with Chinese sponsorship. However, closer examination of this project reveals under-appreciated social influence caused by Chinese sponsored urban projects. These include, for example, the influence of these projects upon residents, which sometimes are described as ‘land grab’. It also includes significant influence upon political system or urban plan making – private or state-owned companies and bureaucracy are involved while local councils are excluded. The projects also reshaped Chinese diaspora communities with a longstanding presence in Mauritius. These complexities shed important light on how JinFei Smart City and major projects like it influence social justice and urban life.
Umar Al Faruq (King's College London) Majed Akhter (King's College London)
Paper short abstract:
We conduct a conjunctural comparison of two new city developments in Asia: Ravi City and Nusantara, developing the category of 'statist urbanization' that argues that such planned developments concentrate power in the central state through legacies of colonial land laws and devolution struggles.
Paper long abstract:
This paper conducts a conjunctural comparison of two new city developments in Asia: Ravi City in Pakistan, and Nusantara in Indonesia. Ravi City is planned as an elite settlement adjacent to Lahore, while Nusantara is planned to replace Jakarta as the new capital city of Indonesia. Analysing legal records, legislative and planning documents, promotional materials, and media coverage, we critically juxtapose the trajectories of planned urbanization of Ravi City and Nusantara within the global conjuncture of infrastructure-led development (ILD). They mark a break from ‘new town’ developments seen in previous decades. This article develops the category of statist urbanization to argue that planned urbanization of new cities in Pakistan and Indonesia concentrates power in the central state at the expense of democratic institutions and local levels of governance. We highlight two features of statist urbanization that shape these sites in distinct but related ways: (1) the colonial legacies of authoritarian land laws and (2) land-based devolution struggles that foreground centralized and militarised state authority. Both projects face hegemonic contest from grass-roots organizations as well as from within the state apparatus, both of whom use nationally formalized political terrains as spaces of contestation. The paper highlights the notable, albeit limited, effectiveness of hegemonic contests to ILD and statist urbanization in arenas such as courts or parliaments while suggesting the need to supplement them with other strategies.
Jhet Scott Cruz (University of the Philippines Manila)
Paper short abstract:
Urban renewal and sprawling in the name of metropolitan accumulation pushes informal settler families out of their right to the city. The paper seeks to analyze the socio-spatial implications of spatial mismatch and alienation of a socialized housing project in a peri-urban relocation site.
Paper long abstract:
The right to adequate housing has become a space of contention of capital under neoliberal governance in urban planning. As rapid urbanization continues in the Asia-Pacific region, the commercialization of spaces results in spatial alienation and the rise of housing-employment separation due to forced evictions in the name of metropolitan accumulation. In the Philippines, the Southville 8 peri-urban relocation site in Rodriguez, Rizal, is one of the largest socialized housing projects (SHPs) of the national government. The urban poor relocatees endure the burden of livelihood displacement, economic and social welfare exclusion, and increased expenditure on basic services due to the spatial characteristics of the relocation site. This typology for peri-urban fringes creates socio-spatial implications in the overall living conditions of the households, especially on how space interacts with social structures and the labor market. This is crucial in the current drive of the government to address its 6.5 million housing backlogs and commit to attaining sustainable cities and communities.
The paper is a mixed methods research that combines study instruments such as an interviewer-administered survey, semi-structured interview, and most significant change (MSC) approach. It aims to analyze the socio-spatial implications of the housing-employment mismatch based on certain direct (commuting-based job accessibility and employment-based job accessibility) and indirect (residential segregation, residential peri-urbanization, and employment peri-urbanization) spatial measurement indicators and its consequential effects in the labor market outcomes (employment participation, wages and earnings, and commuting distance and costs) of at least 80 households in Southville 8 peri-urban relocation site in Rodriguez, Rizal.
Max Woodworth (Ohio State University)
Paper short abstract:
This paper will shed light on how new-city planning schemes combine technocratism and ad-hockery and will examine how this paradoxical combination is generative of new urban spaces, as well as also new epistemologies of city-making and ways of imagining the good life and justice in the city.
Paper long abstract:
The notion of “test-bed urbanism” (Halpern et al. 2013) has been coined in recent years to identify a mode of contemporary urban development in which the city is cast as a site for trying out new and as-yet unproven concepts and technologies in urban space. Critical to the idea of test-bed urbanism is the emphasis placed upon the speculative nature of development agendas and an ideology of innovation for the sake of novelty itself. In this paper, I borrow the notion of test-bed urbanism to explore China’s urbanization in recent decades as being punctuated by the construction of an array of experimental development schemes touted as models and prototypes while simultaneously being highly aspirational, provisional, and performative. By focusing on the tensions between idealized plans and the usually incomplete outcomes of various experimental assays in city-building, I aim to shed light on how such urban planning schemes combine technocratism and ad-hockery and show how this paradoxical and messy combination is, in fact, generative in terms of creating new urban spaces but also new epistemologies of city-making and ways of imagining the good life and justice in the city.