IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/urbstu/v61y2024i3p445-461.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Who owns the city? Neoliberal urbanism and land purchases in Gurgaon, India

Author

Listed:
  • Meher Bhagia

    (The Pennsylvania State University, USA)

  • Mallika Bose

    (The Pennsylvania State University, USA)

Abstract

Increasing purchases of valuable real estate for storing capital have contributed to the soaring prices of modest housing in many global cities and in several South Asian cities such as Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore. Saskia Sassen has drawn attention to the phenomenon of underutilisation of purchased properties existing alongside the acute demand for housing by low- and moderate-income households in the same cities. Despite the gravity of this issue, empirical analyses of urban land transactions remain rare, especially because such purchases often tend to be piecemeal and obscure, involving a multitude of smaller land deals and a variety of actors. This paper examines corporate purchases of urban land in Gurgaon, a city adjacent to New Delhi that has embraced neoliberal economic policies. By creating a land database for the upcoming sectors in the city, the study makes sharply visible: (1) the radical changes in property ownership patterns from agricultural land to luxury gated communities, (2) the growing corporate investments, extreme concentration of land ownership and deeply unequal distribution of urban land and (3) the use of various illicit practices by market-leading companies in land banking.

Suggested Citation

  • Meher Bhagia & Mallika Bose, 2024. "Who owns the city? Neoliberal urbanism and land purchases in Gurgaon, India," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 61(3), pages 445-461, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:urbstu:v:61:y:2024:i:3:p:445-461
    DOI: 10.1177/00420980231184784
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00420980231184784
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/00420980231184784?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Cowan, Thomas, 2018. "The urban village, agrarian transformation, and rentier capitalism in Gurgaon, India," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 89699, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    2. Zoomers, Annelies & van Noorloos, Femke & Otsuki, Kei & Steel, Griet & van Westen, Guus, 2017. "The Rush for Land in an Urbanizing World: From Land Grabbing Toward Developing Safe, Resilient, and Sustainable Cities and Landscapes," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 92(C), pages 242-252.
    3. Francesco Chiodelli, 2019. "The illicit side of urban development: Corruption and organised crime in the field of urban planning," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 56(8), pages 1611-1627, June.
    4. Janine R. Wedel, 2015. "High Priests and the Gospel of Anti-Corruption," Challenge, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 58(1), pages 4-22, January.
    5. Ananya Roy, 2009. "The 21st-Century Metropolis: New Geographies of Theory," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 43(6), pages 819-830.
    6. Femke van Noorloos & Christien Klaufus & Griet Steel, 2019. "Land in urban debates: Unpacking the grab–development dichotomy," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 56(5), pages 855-867, April.
    7. Shoshana R. Goldstein, 2016. "Planning the Millennium City: The politics of place-making in Gurgaon, India," International Area Studies Review, Center for International Area Studies, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, vol. 19(1), pages 12-27, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. J Miguel Kanai & Seth Schindler, 2019. "Peri-urban promises of connectivity: Linking project-led polycentrism to the infrastructure scramble," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 51(2), pages 302-322, March.
    2. Aditya Ray, 2020. "IT-Oriented Infrastructural Development, Urban Co-Dependencies, and the Reconfiguration of Everyday Politics in Pune, India," Urban Planning, Cogitatio Press, vol. 5(4), pages 371-383.
    3. J Miguel Kanai & Seth Schindler, 2022. "Infrastructure-led development and the peri-urban question: Furthering crossover comparisons," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 59(8), pages 1597-1617, June.
    4. Devra Waldman, 2022. "AIMING FOR THE ‘GREEN’: (Post)Colonial and Aesthetic Politics in the Design of a Purified Gated Environment," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 46(2), pages 235-252, March.
    5. Aditya Ray, 2020. "IT-Oriented Infrastructural Development, Urban Co-Dependencies, and the Reconfiguration of Everyday Politics in Pune, India," Urban Planning, Cogitatio Press, vol. 5(4), pages 371-383.
    6. Smriti Singh, 2024. "SOCIOSPATIAL FORMATION OF MIDDLE‐CLASS DISTINCTION: The Educated Middle Classes in Neo‐urban India," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 48(3), pages 386-402, May.
    7. Shin, HaeRan & Chae, Sangwon, 2018. "Urbanisation and land use transition in a second-tier city: The emergence of small factories in Gimpo, South Korea," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 77(C), pages 534-541.
    8. Christien Klaufus & Paul Van Lindert & Femke Van Noorloos & Griet Steel, 2017. "All-Inclusiveness versus Exclusion: Urban Project Development in Latin America and Africa," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 9(11), pages 1-15, November.
    9. Tim Bunnell & Daniel P. S. Goh & Chee-Kien Lai & C. P. Pow, 2012. "Introduction: Global Urban Frontiers? Asian Cities in Theory, Practice and Imagination," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 49(13), pages 2785-2793, October.
    10. Kevin Ward & Timothy Bunnell, 2021. "Reflections on five years of the Summer Institute in Urban Studies," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 58(4), pages 863-878, March.
    11. Tom Gillespie, 2020. "The Real Estate Frontier," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 44(4), pages 599-616, July.
    12. I-Chun Catherine Chang, 2017. "Failure matters: Reassembling eco-urbanism in a globalizing China," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 49(8), pages 1719-1742, August.
    13. Seth Schindler & Jonathan Silver, 2019. "Florida in the Global South: How Eurocentrism Obscures Global Urban Challenges—and What We Can Do about It," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 43(4), pages 794-805, July.
    14. Fulong Wu, 2020. "Adding new narratives to the urban imagination: An introduction to ‘New directions of urban studies in China’," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 57(3), pages 459-472, February.
    15. Almeida, Renan P. & Hungaro, Lucas, 2021. "Water and sanitation governance between austerity and financialization," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 71(C).
    16. Christine Hentschel, 2015. "Postcolonializing Berlin and The Fabrication of The Urban," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 39(1), pages 79-91, January.
    17. Willem Paling, 2012. "Planning a Future for Phnom Penh: Mega Projects, Aid Dependence and Disjointed Governance," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 49(13), pages 2889-2912, October.
    18. Roger Keil, 2011. "The Global City Comes Home," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 48(12), pages 2495-2517, September.
    19. Schröder Friederike & Waibel Michael, 2012. "Urban governance and informality in China’s Pearl River Delta: Investigating economic restructuring in Guangzhou," ZFW – Advances in Economic Geography, De Gruyter, vol. 56(1-2), pages 97-112, October.
    20. Santika, Truly & Wilson, Kerrie A. & Budiharta, Sugeng & Law, Elizabeth A. & Poh, Tun Min & Ancrenaz, Marc & Struebig, Matthew J. & Meijaard, Erik, 2019. "Does oil palm agriculture help alleviate poverty? A multidimensional counterfactual assessment of oil palm development in Indonesia," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 120(C), pages 105-117.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:urbstu:v:61:y:2024:i:3:p:445-461. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.gla.ac.uk/departments/urbanstudiesjournal .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.