A platform for research: civil engineering, architecture and urbanism
A platform for research: civil engineering, architecture and urbanism
In/formal urbanism: cases drawn from Delhi
This thesis attempts to critically engage with urbanization processes through the lens of informality. That is, urban informality as an enduring concept that defines, describes, and delineates urban development. Using case studies from Delhi, it theorizes informality as a practice and seeks to understand its complex social and power dynamics. The research, based on secondary archival and primary qualitative data, shows the role of informality in the production of space, the everyday politics and reasoning of those who are involved in such practices. This thesis develops on how urban informality forms a critical lens in understanding the urbanization process in India rather than understanding informality via the urbanization process. It is broken down into three components, each of which yields a different scale to the analysis. The first component explores the discursive construction of slums in the Indian parliamentary debates. The slum is a contested settlement category, which provides a very specific illustration of urban informality’s contested notions. This section analyses the debates related to slums from the upper house (Rajya Sabha) of the Indian Parliament over a period of 61 years from 1953 until 2014. Using a Foucauldian framework of governmentality and biopolitics, this part outlines the historical progression of the debates, the rationale around conceptualization of slums, and how they transformed into actions via policy and/or legislation. This section analyses the discursive transformation of the notion of slums from a political subject to a technical object and in the process, how the state makes itself indispensable to deal with urban informality. The second component investigates the role of urban informality in producing the city. It takes the informal dumpling (momos) manufacturing-and-selling sector in Delhi’s Chirag Dilli settlement as a case study. Building on a Lefebvrian conceptualization of space, it illustrates how this particular informal cottage industry contributes to the social ...
In/formal urbanism: cases drawn from Delhi
This thesis attempts to critically engage with urbanization processes through the lens of informality. That is, urban informality as an enduring concept that defines, describes, and delineates urban development. Using case studies from Delhi, it theorizes informality as a practice and seeks to understand its complex social and power dynamics. The research, based on secondary archival and primary qualitative data, shows the role of informality in the production of space, the everyday politics and reasoning of those who are involved in such practices. This thesis develops on how urban informality forms a critical lens in understanding the urbanization process in India rather than understanding informality via the urbanization process. It is broken down into three components, each of which yields a different scale to the analysis. The first component explores the discursive construction of slums in the Indian parliamentary debates. The slum is a contested settlement category, which provides a very specific illustration of urban informality’s contested notions. This section analyses the debates related to slums from the upper house (Rajya Sabha) of the Indian Parliament over a period of 61 years from 1953 until 2014. Using a Foucauldian framework of governmentality and biopolitics, this part outlines the historical progression of the debates, the rationale around conceptualization of slums, and how they transformed into actions via policy and/or legislation. This section analyses the discursive transformation of the notion of slums from a political subject to a technical object and in the process, how the state makes itself indispensable to deal with urban informality. The second component investigates the role of urban informality in producing the city. It takes the informal dumpling (momos) manufacturing-and-selling sector in Delhi’s Chirag Dilli settlement as a case study. Building on a Lefebvrian conceptualization of space, it illustrates how this particular informal cottage industry contributes to the social ...
In/formal urbanism: cases drawn from Delhi
Palat Narayanan, Nipesh (author)
2018-01-01
Theses
Electronic Resource
English
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