Learning from the Utopian City: An international network on alternative histories of India's urban futures

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This project interweaves social history, postcolonial and urban studies to learn from alternative histories of the utopian city in order to shape India's urban future. It does this by taking the view that utopias are as much of grassroots articulations of socially inclusive cities and citizenship as they are top-down visions of urban planning. Building upon the strong foundations established through existing partnerships between UK and Indian researchers, this project aims to explore how an alternate history of utopian urban planning can inform the trajectories of future cities and urbanization in India. It is led by urban geographer (Datta) from UK and architect and feminist geographer (Sabhlok) from India. This is supported by UK Co-Is - Indian historian (Gould) and Urban History and development scholar (Madgin). The aim of the network is to uncover parallel histories of the utopian city that have so far been changed, dominated or appropriated by top down visions of Indian urban planning. It will examine urban histories as being made up of a variety of interacting and sometimes competing utopian visions. These visions also define citizenship in differentiated rather than universal ways, strongly linked to context, material conditions and political activism. The network will analyse and share knowledge of these alternate histories through a series of inter-connected city workshops with local academics, urban planners and grassroots organisations in India and an end of project symposium in the UK.The network aims to answer the following key questions:- How are urban utopias historically and culturally conditioned in India? The aim here will be to map and analyse how utopian visions of a new kind of social and political order have particular associations with regimes of control and containment. This will examine how utopias envisioned in newly independent India (1950s) are connected to utopian visions of the 1960s or post liberalization India (2000s). We will identify common threads and divergences in city blueprints, the parameters of creating these cities and their current contribution to India's urban future. We will also explore how far urban utopian visions are conditioned by competitive aspirations and developed for external audiences. - How can the utopian city take account not just of the diversity of its citizens but also the diversity of their visions of the ideal city? This seeks to address the paradoxical nature of the utopian city - as a rule of order and as a productive space of transformation. In other words, we will seek to question how utopias are embodied and engendered by subaltern citizens to sustain as well as challenge political regulation. Drawing upon oral histories, diaries, photographs, letters and other forms of informal artefacts brought to the workshops, this will seek to unsettle the finality of the urban utopia to suggest the continuous mode of becoming of the utopian Indian city. - How can a history of the utopian city inform the future of India's urbanization? This aims to examine a dual utopian visioning whereby it is only possible to imagine a utopian future by learning from the history of urban utopias. In so doing, we approach India's urban futures as already written through its urban histories and therefore accessible to us only through an understanding of its histories. Moreover, as the future is yet to materialise, we argue that its trajectory can be shifted towards more inclusive outcomes through the inclusion of a history of subaltern utopias.The further purpose of the meetings is to extend the project to a) other South Asian cities; b) explore the means by which academics working on urban society and culture can interact with planners, third sector organisations and architects; c) explore the possibilities for further projects examining the relationship between urban utopias in the Global South and global north.