Doctoral Dissertation Research: Infrastructural Development and Urban Participatory Governance

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Designing and maintaining infrastructures is as much a social problem as a technical one. Understanding the interplay between governance, communication systems, and mechanical infrastructures is a critical part of developing and managing urban spaces. This study, which trains a graduate student in methods of rigorous, empirical data collection and analysis, traces connections between the built environments of roads, the social lives of users, and the processes of negotiation they engage in. By revealing unexpected ways in which infrastructures function, this research will contribute to broader discussions among urban planners, municipal bodies, and other institutions invested in the governance of urban spaces.Neha Dhole, under the supervision of Dr. Laura Brown of the University of Pittsburgh, will explore the relationship between models of social distance and urban infrastructures in planned landscapes. In many cities, roads and surrounding spaces are used in ways that are rarely recognized by municipal bodies. They are places where people sleep, sell food, park vehicles, post advertisements, and engage in other forms of connection and contestation that shape urban life. This research examines debates among residents, workers, municipal bodies, and other state authorities over the care of roads in New Delhi, India, an appropriate laboratory for asking such questions because of its pilot of a participatory urban development project. The project focuses on one of several neighborhoods planned and built by the Delhi Development Authority to promote secularism and equality among dwellers. Drawing on interviews with residents, street vendors, domestic workers, technical experts, and bureaucrats, along with observation of interactions among them through face-to-face conversations, online exchanges, petitions, and newsletters, the study will examine the link between material infrastructure of roads and conversations, institutions, and forms of sociality. The project will combine analytic models from anthropology, sociolinguistics, and urban planning to better understand the enmeshment of roads and other communication networks. Results will be useful in framing and evaluating participatory governance systems, particularly in thinking through how social media can shape decision-making processes at the local, municipal, and national levels. More broadly, the study will map shifting connections between religion, class, and public spaces in India and beyond.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.