Joël Ruet and Stéphanie Tawa Lama-Rewal (eds), Governing India’s Metropolises (Routledge), 2009

Abstract

Explosive growth of cities raises a question about how the increasing concentration of population in urban areas will change the world. Based on two decades of fieldwork, the author argues that cities are the medium for change. The book is divided into three parts. These parts deal with Urban Revolution, City Adrift and Strategy for Urban Planet, respectively.In the book, Brugmann describes the urban revolution in small cities like Machala (Ecuador), Tiruppur (Tamil Nadu, India), Irwine (California) and others influencing the world. Many things were influenced by cities globally even before the Internet. Scale, density and association cluster together, bring cost efficiencies and investments, and this leads to global urban growth. Recent World Development Report 2009 also presents similar views. The Dharavi slum in Mumbai is a good example. It has very high density leading to low transport cost, high utilization of property, close linkages with suppliers and retailers, and so on. It also has close urban associations. Today, Dharavi has global business linkages.Brugmann proposes total transformation in city planning and management systems. He argues that city systems grow organically not by technical planning. In days of market-driven development, urban policy makers should create commercial opportunities so predictable that they rally a city's private interests to support necessary market disciplines and reforms and have stable alliance. Avoiding a crisis on urban system requires that we design cities as efficient productive systems that are governed by communities with strategic purposes.This book is the outcome of a multi-disciplinary international team and presents the findings of an empirical study on urban governance in Indian metropolises. The core of the book is the result of many years of research to find heuristic value and an irenic vision in case of urban governance and social relationship in four metropolitan cities: Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Kolkata. The objective of the book is to describe and analyze urban governance through the study of decision-making processes pertaining to the supply and demand of collective goods and services in these four Indian metropolises. In order to assess the reality of the decentralization process which is in principle at the heart of the new configuration and the sectorial case studies supplemented, the city studies focuses on the relations between three levels of government: Centre, State, Municipal Corporation. These studies lay emphasis on some major counter-currents, such as the increasing metropolization of urban management, the means given to elected state and national representatives to act locally and the role that the judiciary is taking over on this matter. The book is divided into two parts: Themes India has to improve its urban areas to achieve objectives of economic development. As huge investment is required in India's urban sector, it has to look for innovative approaches for financing urban services.