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The fast-paced growth of the Indian economy and particularly its cities has produced an urban crisis, one that is marked by the lack of adequate infrastructure and growth management as well as by sharp social divisions that are starkly etched in a landscape of bourgeois enclaves and slums. In this context, there are numerous calls for a more decisive and vigorous type of planning that can `future-proof' Indian cities. Yet, such efforts are often unsuccessful and many are fiercely challenged by social movements and forms of insurgence. This article explains this urban crisis by analyzing the structure of urban informality in India. While informality is often seen to be synonymous with poverty, this article makes the case that India's planning regime is itself an informalized entity, one that is a state of deregulation, ambiguity, and exception. This idiom of urbanization makes possible new frontiers of development but also creates the territorial impossibility of governance, justice, and development.

Roy A. The 21st-century metropolis: new geographies of theory, Regional Studies. This paper calls for 'new geographies' of imagination and epistemology in the production of urban and regional theory. It argues that the dominant theorizations of global city-regions are rooted in the EuroAmerican experience and are thus unable to analyse multiple forms of metropolitan modernities. By drawing on the urban experience of the global South, the paper presents new conceptual vectors for understanding the worlding of cities, the production of space, and the dynamics of exurbanity. It makes the case that such area-based knowledge deepens recent theoretical attempts to articulate a relational study of space and place. [image omitted] Roy A. Les metropoles du XXIe siecle: nouvelle geographie de la theorie, Regional Studies. Cet article appelle a de nouvelles geographies de l'imagination et de l'epistemologie pour la production de theories urbaines et regionales. Il avance que les theorisations dominantes des villes-regions du monde sont enracinees dans l'experience euro-americaine et sont donc incapables d'analyser les formes multiples de la modernite des metropoles. En s'appuyant sur l'experience urbaine du Sud, cet article presente de nouveaux vecteurs conceptuels pour comprendre la mondialisation des villes, la production d'espaces et la dynamique de l'exurbanisation. Il pretend que la connaissance basee sur la region approfondit de recentes tentatives theoriques visant a expliquer une etude relationnelle de l'espace et de la place. Nouvelle geographie Avenir de l'urbanite Theorie de l'urbanite Urbanisation Urbanisme Villes du tiers-monde Roy A. Die Metropole im 21. Jahrhundert: neue Geografien der Theorie, Regional Studies. In diesem Artikel werden 'neue Geografien' der Fantasie und Epistemologie bei der Entwicklung von urbanen und regionalen Theorien gefordert. Es wird argumentiert, dass die dominanten Theoretisierungen der globalen Stadtregionen in der euro-amerikanischen Erfahrung verwurzelt sind, weshalb sie sich nicht zu einer Analyse der multiplen Formen von metropolitanen Modernitaten eignen. Durch eine Nutzung der urbanen Erfahrungen im globalen Suden werden im Artikel neue konzeptuelle Vektoren fur das Verstandnis der Weltentwicklung von Stadten, der Produktion von Raum und der Dynamik der Exurbanitat vorgestellt. Es wird argumentiert, dass sich durch ein solches gebietsbasiertes Wissen die jungsten theoretischen Versuche der Artikulation einer relationalen Studie von Raum und Ort vertiefen lassen. Neue Geografien Urbane Zukunften Stadttheorie Urbanisierung Stadtplanung Drittweltstadte Roy A. La metropolis del siglo XXI: Nuevas geografias de la teoria, Regional Studies. En este articulo abogo por unas 'nuevas geografias' de la imaginacion y la epistemologia en la produccion de la teoria urbana y regional. Postulo que las teorizaciones dominantes de las regiones ciudades globales tienen sus raices en la experiencia euroamericana y por tanto no son capaces de analizar las diversas formas de modernidades metropolit...

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This article is an intervention in the epistemologies and methodologies of urban studies. It seeks to understand and transform the ways in which the cities of the global'Across a filthy, rubbish-filled creek we enter the slum's heaving residential area, treading carefully to ensure we do not step in human sewage. Live wires hang from wobbly walls; we crouch through corridor-like passages between houses made from reclaimed rubble as the sky disappears above our heads. Behind flimsy doorway curtains we spy babies sleeping on dirty mattresses in tiny single room homes, mothers busy washing, cooking and cleaning.The few hours I spend touring Mumbai's teeming Dharavi slum are uncomfortable and upsetting, teetering on voyeuristic. They are also among the most uplifting of my life.Instead of a neighbourhood characterised by misery, I find a bustling and enterprising place, packed with smallscale industries defying their circumstances to flourish amidst the squalor. Rather than pity, I am inspired by man's alchemic ability to thrive when the chips are down. ' Crerar (2010)

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Recent assertions of urban theory have dismissed the value of postcolonial critique in urban studies. This essay draws on postcolonial theory to demonstrate key flaws in such theoretical formulations. In doing so, it returns to the puzzle of how and why studying urbanism in the global South might matter for the reconceptualization of critical urban theory. Instead of a universal grammar of cityness, modified by (exotic) empirical variation, the essay foregrounds forms of theorization that are attentive to historical difference as a fundamental constituent of global urbanization. What is at stake, the essay concludes, is a culture of theory, one that in its Eurocentrism tends to foreclose multiple concepts of the urban and alternative understandings of political economy. A concern with the rela tion ship between place, knowledge and power--a key insight of postcolonial critique-might make possible new practices of theory in urban studies.This essay benefited from comments provided by three anonymous IJURR referees, as well as comments from Jenny Robinson. I am grateful to Colin McFarlane for pointing me to Aamir Mufti's essay on global comparativism. Final revisions to this essay were made during my sabbatical at the Department of Geography, National University of Singapore, and I thank colleagues there for their hospitality. I owe special thanks to Michael Dear for his careful and constructive reading of this essay.

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