IN-PERSON: Prague – Section A

Abstract

Urban space and built environment have been historically entwined with the everyday politics and sociopolitical movements of a city. This is especially so in the case of cities like Bombay and Bangalore, which grew out of industrial economies in the early and mid-twentieth century – with vibrant working-class neighborhoods and townships, wherein labor politics and various other kinds of claims-making practices took shape. Juxtaposing the distinct legacies of the built heritage of the two cities, Mumbai which was shaped by the textile mills and chawls of the colonial era, and Bangalore which was shaped by the socialist state-owned industries and its large townships in a decolonized India, reveals important facets of the politics of the two cities. With both cities emerging as global megacities in the twenty-first century, long past their manufacturing heyday, the relics of these pasts and their associated life-worlds are embodied by the material remnants, in neighborhoods and townships. Building on my previous research as a UNESCO fellow for Sahapedia, on the ‘Chawls of Mumbai’, I wish to examine how the built heritage of the industrial economy of the two cities, have shaped the political and social fabric of the city, historically as well as in the present. Working class neighborhoods were used as a conduit for its residents to interact with the city at large, in a space of collective existence that fostered both harmonious coexistence as well as conflict. How have the spatial and material legacies of pasts based on industrial production and powerful working class movements, often forgotten or erased, shaped the history of the present?