Doctoral Dissertation Research: Green Evictions: The Politics of Land Privatization and Access in Delhi

30年来，印度德里首次发生大规模强迫驱逐非正式穷人的事件。这些驱逐是由城市公共土地私有化造成的。媒体、政客和法院将德里穷人的流离失所解释为环境改善的过程：通过驱逐穷人来绿化城市。本研究的目的是探讨环境话语是如何塑造印度城市化的人文地理。特别是，它着眼于在合法化的公共土地私有化的环境话语的作用，这种私有化如何影响德里的贫困居民的生计和保有权保障，以及穷人如何理解和应对这些不断变化的条件和环境的代表性。本博士论文研究项目包括三个阶段，探讨了环境话语在关键地理节点的生产，流通和接收。第一阶段将审查精英阶层对环境的看法，以探究反穷人和往往是新自由主义的环境表述是如何产生和组织的。第二阶段将探讨如何通过政府的调查和绘图工作将这些陈述传播到非正规住区，以及非正规穷人如何接受和回应这些陈述。这项研究的第三阶段将调查德里的一个定居点如何通过自我测绘和创建自己的“绿色城市”替代代表来有效地阻止驱逐。“本博士论文研究将采用多种定性方法，包括参与者观察，结构化和非结构化访谈，印刷材料检查，档案研究和小规模结构化调查。本研究通过探讨环境规制和话语如何与新自由主义经济议程相一致的问题，为全球南方的新自由主义改革和城市重建的学术和政策辩论做出贡献。本研究对世界各地和国家的新自由主义经济改革条件下的财产权、土地保有权、公共空间和贫困政策问题具有广泛的影响。它将为促进可持续和公平的城市发展项目提供具体的政策建议，评估印度城市经济改革的社会影响，并深入了解城市穷人如何应对监管和政治限制。它还将有助于城市地理学内部关于全球南方空间结构调整和城市治理模式的辩论，并有助于讨论印度城市政治经济和城市化的当前变化。作为博士论文研究改进奖，该奖项还将提供支持，使有前途的学生建立一个强大的独立的研究生涯。

For the first time in thirty years, large-scale, forced evictions of the informal poor are taking place in Delhi, India. These evictions are driven by the privatization of public urban land. The displacement of Delhi's poor is explained and often justified by the media, politicians and the courts as a process of environmental improvement: greening the city by evicting the poor. The objective of this study is to examine how environmental discourse is shaping the human geography of Indian urbanism. In particular, it looks at the role of environmental discourse in legitimating the privatization of public land, how this privatization has affected the livelihoods and tenure security of Delhi's poor residents, and how the poor understand and respond to these changing conditions and representations of the environment. This doctoral dissertation research project consists of three phases, which explore the production, circulation, and reception of environmental discourse at key geographic nodes. The first phase will examine elite perceptions of the environment to interrogate how anti-poor and often neoliberal representations of the environment are produced and organized. The second phase will explore how these representations are spread into informal settlements, in part through government survey and mapping exercises, and how the informal poor receive and respond to these representations. The study's third phase will investigate how one settlement in Delhi has effectively thwarted eviction by self-mapping and creating its own alternative representation of a "green city." This doctoral dissertation research will employ multiple qualitative methods, including participant observation, structured and unstructured interviews, examination of print materials, archival research, and small-scale structured surveys. This study will contribute to academic and policy debates on neoliberal reform and urban restructuring in the global South by probing into the question of how environmental regulations and discourses come to align with a neoliberal economic agenda.This project has wide-ranging implications for the issues of property rights, land tenure, public space, and poverty policy under conditions of neoliberal economic reform for localities and states around the world. It will provide concrete policy recommendations for promoting sustainable and equitable urban development projects, evaluate the social impacts of economic reform in Indian cities, and provide insight into how the urban poor respond to regulatory and political constraints. It will also contribute to debates within urban geography over patterns of spatial restructuring and urban governance in the global South and to discussions of current changes in the political economy and urbanism of Indian cities. As a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement award, this award will also provide support to enable a promising student to establish a strong independent research career.