Set against Bengaluru’s exploding real estate sector, Chronicles of a Global City: Speculative Lives and Unsettled Futures in Bengaluru published by University of Minnesota Press tracks the city’s transformation into a ‘world city’ through long-term ethnographic research. It offers a glimpse into the lives and everyday struggles of the millions whose work constitutes the building blocks of this urban transformation. It explores the city that construction labourers, gig workers, domestic workers and street vendors inhabit, their livelihood challenges, farmers’ dispossession and decaying ecology, all emblematic of urban crises worldwide.
A compilation of essays compiled and edited by Vinay Gidwani, professor of geography and global studies at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities; Michael Goldman, associate professor of sociology and global studies at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities; and Carol Upadhya, visiting professor at the National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bengaluru, the book examines speculative investments in land driven by global capital and local political power, alongside growing marginalisation and precarity for labour.
In an introductory chapter by the three editors, they say, “The stories that you will read in the following chapters grapple with questions of urban belonging and citizenship, agrarian transformation, and how the city can become an ecologically and socially just place for all.”
Excerpt
Bengaluru’s urban future is here. Or at least in prototype, if we go by the proclamations of Snehdeep Aggarwal, founder-chairman of Bhartiya Group and self-described mayor of the 125-acre integrated township of Bhartiya City, near Hebbal. Aggarwal exuberantly calls the project his “City of Joy.” The guiding concept that anchors this “smart megacity”? Improbably, it is “happiness.” Aggarwal’s ambition is to build a city that is an “ecosystem” for happiness. As the website for Bhartiya City announces: “Happiness is in the little things. Happiness isn’t momentary, it’s a state of being. Happiness is not an island. The more you are surrounded by happy people, the greater your chances of being happy. Happiness is a product of all those little things coming together to form a complete environment—an ecosystem.” Bhartiya City’s sales proposition is that happiness can be planned, and you are invited to participate.
The township’s plan involves “eight precincts,” promising “a seamless mix of the finest residential spaces, office towers, hotels, public realms, parks,” as well as a performing arts center, state-of-the-art hospitals, and “efficient transport links to provide a complete environment for better living.” The on-site K-12 standard Chaman Bhartiya School (onetime admission fee: 120,000 rupees; annual tuition fee: 165,000 rupees) styles itself as the “Maker of Leaders.” Under the directorship of Copenhagen-born Allan Kjaer Andersen, it pledges to “prepare children for leadership positions in the uncertain and complex world of the future” by combining “the best of Indian and Scandinavian education.” Perhaps mindful of the clientele of parents who will enroll their children in the school, Andersen describes the learning environment as “ joyful and stimulating without compromising academic rigour”—a goal that is realized through “projects and play-based pedagogies” in partnership with LEGO Education and Apple Education Solutions Provider, which ensures that teachers receive “digital professional development by Apple-certified trainers.”
Bhartiya City’s promotional materials also highlight “Financial Districts” offering offices for small and medium-size enterprises, incubator units, and flexible business space: “There’s something for everyone,” it reassures us, “from Multi-National Corporations to e-startups.” Not convinced? Here’s another nudge. Workplaces at Bhartiya City will nestle in a “rural haven” of “freshly cut grass, ever-growing trees, cascading water, mellow cafes and far-reaching parks,” guaranteeing that “it’s not all work and no play.” And that’s not all. The township’s website also flaunts a “High Street” containing the “best of London, Paris, Barcelona and New York”—guaranteed to make “even the most serious of shoppers giddy.” Visitors will find “chic boutiques” and “expansive malls” hosting “the likes of Hermes and Louis Vuitton among other popular brands.” And of course, a variety of restaurants (with no pesky street vendors to hinder your enjoyment of this urban utopia).
Oh, and let’s not forget that this is after all a smart city. When Bhartiya City’s central command center—Aggarwal calls it “the brain”—is fully up and running, life’s amenities will be available at your fingertips: “Enter, an app called Whimbl. Book a show, book a table, book a court, replenish your groceries, get your car washed, you get the idea. If you are a husband responsible for the chores of your household, this simple app should make you a happy man indeed.” There is a nod and a wink here to the professional and tech-savvy families, with cosmopolitan gender norms, who are likely to be your neighbors—if that’s the social mix you desire.
Alas, Aggarwal does not have a monopoly on happiness. The rival Embassy Springs, a 288-acre self-contained residential township in Devanahalli, advertises itself as “Bengaluru’s biggest and best planned city,” with a “limited edition” town center and estate plots “that are surrounded by the finest things life can offer.” A mammoth sign embellishes the entrance. Emblazoned on it: “Embassy Springs—The Masterplan for Happiness.” In a 2017 property guide, the real estate website PropTiger.com lists Embassy Springs as one of its “Top 5 Upcoming Integrated Townships in Bengaluru.” Others that make the list include Ozone Urbana Avenue (in Kannamangala), Brigade Orchards (in Devanahalli), Prestige Lakeside Habitat (in Varthur), and Bhartiya City Nikoo Homes Phase 2 (in Thanisandra). Niranjan Hiranandani, managing director of the Hiranandani real estate group, praises mixed-use integrated townships as a “new urbanism”—the panacea for a plethora of urban ills, from congestion, lack of infrastructure, and increase in traffic and travel time to low-quality living spaces.
Hiranandani, who is also vice-chairman of the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development’s National Real Estate Development Council, oddly makes no mention of India’s rich history of integrated developments, from company towns to public-sector townships. Bhilai, Bokaro, Bhadravati, Jamshedpur, and Jaffrabad are a few that spring to mind. Whereas these were primarily intended as self-contained housing projects for employees, with various amenities ready at hand, perhaps what makes today’s townships a distinctively “new-age construction” (in Hiranandani’s words) is their purposeful alignment with the market logics of entrepreneurship and consumption. Contemporary mixed-use townships are premised on a postindustrial imagination, where digitally mediated service-sector jobs have overtaken manufacturing. Hence, each one, to varying degrees, promises a setting where workplace productivity can be optimized by minimizing the trade-off between labor time and leisure time. And if you’re concerned about your ecological footprint, the integrated township offers a class-exclusive total environment to live your “green” values. Thus, Aggarwal imagines “a city where you will live close to your work” and perhaps commute there on bicycle, spending far less on petrol as your car slumbers in a parking lot. In fact, he believes, “Environmentalists around the world will want to hug this city for this.”
“Golden Springs” is a competing mixed-use project in northwest Bengaluru that has transformed the landscape of a previously down-to-earth industrial locality. Keen to obtain a firsthand sense of the architectural vision that underlay this “world-class” development—containing luxury apartments, an upscale office complex, a high-end
mall, theaters, a private school, a hotel, and green space—we went to meet the man behind the concept.
“Viren,” a prominent architect, is an expansive talker, with a gift for regaling listeners with fascinating trivia mined from urban lore. His stories swing buoyantly from past to present, populated by a cast of colorful characters. We meet Seshadri Iyer, the legendary Diwan of the princely state of Mysore, who held his post from 1883 to 1901. “He was a visionary,” Viren gushed, “responsible for the city’s development.” A follower of the “sanitary movement,” which subscribed to the miasma theory of disease and gained traction in the UK in the 1840s before spreading to Europe’s imperial peripheries, Iyer oversaw the formation of new residential extensions in Bangalore—in Basavangudi and Malleswaram—following the devastating plague of
1898, with wide roads, greenery, and planned layouts (in contrast to the congested inner city where most of the Indian population resided). These extensions, drawing on the colonial model, replicated on the “Indian” side of the city, planned settlements like Fraser Town which already existed in the cantonment (the British or “white” settlement). Viren describes the new localities created by Iyer as “well designed and inclusive neighborhoods,” eliding the fact that these modern, planned layouts later became segregated from other localities along the lines of caste and class.
Viren then adds an offhand observation about Patrick Geddes, the polymath who lived and worked as a town planner in India from 1914 to 1924 (he was also a biologist, sociologist, and philosopher). We are dazzled by Viren’s chronicles of city-making but perplexed regarding why Iyer and Geddes were named side by side. Is it merely part of his freewheeling repertoire of stories? Or is he tracing a diverse, seemingly cacophonic architectural lineage to make a point? Designers have always worked at the crossroads of influences—local and nonlocal, old and new, “authentic” and “avant-garde.” Architects as city designers are no different. Geddes, for instance, saw the Indian subcontinent as fertile terrain for his plans to reshape existing towns and cities. His vision of the “regional city” pivoted on harnessing the rich ecological and cultural traditions of a place, thereby enlivening what he considered the West’s blunt materialism with the East’s redemptive spiritualism. In south Asian cities such as Lahore, Baroda, Indore, and Lucknow, Geddes fine-tuned his method of “conservative surgery”: revitalizing urban quarters by minimizing the destruction of existing buildings or the expulsion of settled populations. His method, which contrasted with the standard demolish-and-rebuild approach of British municipal engineers, rested on discovering a city’s genius loci—the spirit of a place—and designing a plan to improve and amend a city’s environment in alignment with this inherited character.
Given Viren’s formative role in Bengaluru’s aspirational reinvention as a global city—he has been involved in some of the most defining (and, critics might say, disruptive) architectural projects in the city—Geddes struck us as an odd inspiration. And yet, as our conversation with Viren unfolded, we came to appreciate that his illustrious career personifies the tension between “world city” ideals (to be like Dubai, Singapore, or Shanghai), driven by a real estate industry catering to foreign investors and upwardly mobile professionals who expect an “international lifestyle,” and aesthetic concerns over the loss of a city’s unique identity or heritage. After all, the sameness of “world city” builtscapes—the repetitive parade of glass-and-steel high-rises, swanky malls, curated shopping districts with brand-name stores, and sanitized green spaces—can overwhelm the quirks and differences that impart cities their distinctiveness.
Builders and architects have navigated this tension by striving to weave traditional elements of heritage into planning layouts and structures (which then become their own niche selling proposition). Aggarwal, for example, waxes nostalgic about his own childhood in Amritsar. On his blog he writes that “it was a great revelation to me that some of the greatest cities in the world—like Barcelona, for example—had striking similarities to my own little Amritsar. Both were planned and designed in such a way that one could easily walk or cycle to schools, hospitals and even work. It then hurt me to see that most urban centres in India are unfriendly to their own people.”
For Aggarwal, then, Bhartiya City embodies the best of the traditional and the modern. Golden Springs, the mixed-use community designed by Viren, offers similar conveniences. But while Aggarwal the developer finds inspiration in personal memory (Amritsar of yore), Viren the architect finds it in planning history (city designers like Iyer and Geddes). And although Viren’s portfolio boasts a slew of high-
profile modernist projects, he has come to regard himself as a guardian of “Old Bangalore’s architectural heritage.” In recent years his firm has restored several iconic buildings in the city. These undertakings, ostensibly meant to interrupt the world city’s gleaming monotony, are a source of great pride to him.
(Excerpted from “Envisioning the City” by Vinay Gidwani, from Chronicles of a Global City: Speculative Lives and Unsettled Futures in Bengaluru, Vinay Gidwani, Michael Goldman, and Carol Upadhya, editors. Published by the University of Minnesota Press. Copyright 2024 by the regents of the University of Minnesota. Used with permission. All rights reserved.)
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