Mega-Urbanization in the Global South

From master-planned new cities built from scratch in Masdar, to satellite cities in Jakarta, these new cities all point to an innovation in shaping the nature of mega urbanization across the global south. Countries from Asia, Africa, Middle-east and Latin America have all seen repid urban growth. City-building in these countries is legitimised as the ‘solution’ to a number of economic, environmental and developmental crises that have been unprecedented in human history.

This book will be the first to examine the role of new city-building in the context of masterplanning and mega-urbanization of countries in the global south. Contributions from an international range of established and emerging scholars draw upon real world examples of city-building and masterplanning in the global south to explore three main themes. Part I considers the heightened agency of the postcolonial neoliberal state, which plays a major role in the materialisation of utopian city-building projects within its territory. Part II examines how the pace of urbanization has been accelerated and legitimised by current global challenges, such as climate change, resource depletion and rural-urban migration. These cities are not just ‘private’ cities or corporate-driven cities; they are also ‘fast’ cities. Part III explores the localization of masterplanned cities, considering simultaneous ‘localization’ of scalar politics between local, regional and central states that lead to decisions around the ‘location’ of new cities along transport corridors in order to maintain their global connections with other cities and mega-regions in the world. Each country and region of a new city contains is own economic and political contexts. This book explores the contradictions between intended and unintended outcomes of these city-building projects and points to the ever-increasing politics over land, acting as the critical battleground between state sovereignty, capital interests and citizenship rights.

This timely and original book presents urban scholars with the theoretical, empirical and methodological challenges of mega-urbanization in the global south, as well as highlighting the new theoretical agendas and empirical analyses that these new forms of city-making bring.

Ayona Datta is Senior Lecturer in Citizenship and Belonging in University of Leeds, School of Geography. Her broad research interests are in the social and cultural processes shaping notions of home, belonging and citizenship in cities like London, Delhi, Mumbai and Izmir. She uses approaches from urban sociology, feminist geography, and architecture focusing specifically on the politics of citizenship, identity and belonging in cities and urban spaces.

Abdul Shaban is Professor at the Centre for Public Policy, Habitat and Human Development, School of Development Studies, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. He has worked as consultants with the World Bank projects on rehabilitation of infrastructure of displaced families in Mumbai, Corporate Sectors on financial and urban water issues, and has been member of several committee appointed by the State and Central Government of India with the major aim of bringing about inclusive development in India.