A City for Whom? Marginalization and the Production of Space in Contemporary Bangalore, India
As the locus of urbanization moves Southward, dynamics of city-making are rapidly shifting. In the context of India which has experienced pronounced urban shifts since the 1990s, this chapter draws upon one specific case of a slum eviction in Bangalore, a
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15
Chloe Pottinger-Glass and Karin Pfeffer
15.1
Introduction
“Mary is an unlucky name.” Standing outside her makeshift dwelling—a patchwork of tarpaulin and rags jostling for space with a dozen or so others, Mary tells her story over a cup of black coffee, brewed on a small open fire. Five years ago the bulldozers came. Her husband has gone, most of her children have gone, except her daughter who lives in a tent across the road with her infant child. During the eviction she lost most of her possessions and has been living on the pavement ever since. She was promised refuge, but after her life savings were given in the hope of resettlement, the men she gave the money to never returned.
Mary is one of Bangalore’s pavement dwellers—her living situation not uncommon as the pace of urban development in the last several decades in India has created an increasing gap between the rich and poor. As sprawling IT campuses, multi-story shopping malls and luxury residences have dotted the skyscape, informal areas such as the slum formerly known as Ejipura where Mary and over 1000 other families used to live, have become increasingly dissonant with the imaginary of the modern Indian city (Fig. 15.1). C. Pottinger-Glass (*) International Centre for Environmental Management, Hanoi, Vietnam K. Pfeffer Faculty of Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation (ITC), Department of Urban and Regional Planning and Geo-Information Management, University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands
Based on a period of empirical research, this chapter explores the multi-layered and rapidly shifting complexities of city-making and urban regulation in Bangalore through one specific case study: the Ejipura slum eviction. As its key question, this chapter asks what the case of Ejipura can tell us about the way urban development is being carried out in Bangalore; specifically—who are the actors, what are the governance instruments and broader structures, and how are they used by various actors to control, produce, negotiate and contest urban space. We approach quality of life and sustainability in an urban context, focusing primarily on the socio-political dimension. Various frameworks are offered in the literature for conceptualizing and measuring quality of life in cities. Serag El Din et al. (2013, p. 89) group aspects of urban quality of life into seven main dimensions: (1) environmental, (2) physical, (3) mobility, (4) social, (5) psychological, (6) economic and (7) political. From these, recommendations are provided to improve quality of life for communities, for example “promote social justice and equity by providing equal access to affordable housing, economic activities, services and facilities”. The World Bank (2002) takes an urban poverty-based approach, grouping features into four main brackets: (1) income and social poverty which includes lack of access to job markets and lack of access to governance and decision making; (2) environmental poverty which describes risk of disasters and inadequate
# Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 J.
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