Learning from the Utopian City: An international network on alternative histories of India's urban futures

This project interweaves social history, postcolonial and urban studies to learn from alternative histories of the utopian city in order to shape India's urban future. It does this by taking the view that utopias are as much of grassroots articulations of socially inclusive cities and citizenship as they are top-down visions of urban planning. Building upon the strong foundations established through existing partnerships between UK and Indian researchers, this project aims to explore how an alternate history of utopian urban planning can inform the trajectories of future cities and urbanization in India. It is led by urban geographer (Datta) from UK and architect and feminist geographer (Sabhlok) from India. This is supported by UK Co-Is - Indian historian (Gould) and Urban History and development scholar (Madgin). The aim of the network is to uncover parallel histories of the utopian city that have so far been changed, dominated or appropriated by top down visions of Indian urban planning. It will examine urban histories as being made up of a variety of interacting and sometimes competing utopian visions. These visions also define citizenship in differentiated rather than universal ways, strongly linked to context, material conditions and political activism. The network will analyse and share knowledge of these alternate histories through a series of inter-connected city workshops with local academics, urban planners and grassroots organisations in India and an end of project symposium in the UK.

The network aims to answer the following key questions:
- How are urban utopias historically and culturally conditioned in India? The aim here will be to map and analyse how utopian visions of a new kind of social and political order have particular associations with regimes of control and containment. This will examine how utopias envisioned in newly independent India (1950s) are connected to utopian visions of the 1960s or post liberalization India (2000s). We will identify common threads and divergences in city blueprints, the parameters of creating these cities and their current contribution to India's urban future. We will also explore how far urban utopian visions are conditioned by competitive aspirations and developed for external audiences.
- How can the utopian city take account not just of the diversity of its citizens but also the diversity of their visions of the ideal city? This seeks to address the paradoxical nature of the utopian city - as a rule of order and as a productive space of transformation. In other words, we will seek to question how utopias are embodied and engendered by subaltern citizens to sustain as well as challenge political regulation. Drawing upon oral histories, diaries, photographs, letters and other forms of informal artefacts brought to the workshops, this will seek to unsettle the finality of the urban utopia to suggest the continuous mode of becoming of the utopian Indian city.
- How can a history of the utopian city inform the future of India's urbanization? This aims to examine a dual utopian visioning whereby it is only possible to imagine a utopian future by learning from the history of urban utopias. In so doing, we approach India's urban futures as already written through its urban histories and therefore accessible to us only through an understanding of its histories. Moreover, as the future is yet to materialise, we argue that its trajectory can be shifted towards more inclusive outcomes through the inclusion of a history of subaltern utopias.

The further purpose of the meetings is to extend the project to a) other South Asian cities; b) explore the means by which academics working on urban society and culture can interact with planners, third sector organisations and architects; c) explore the possibilities for further projects examining the relationship between urban utopias in the Global South and global north.

The central thrust of this project is to examine the ways in which urban utopian visions have been conceived and implemented within Indian cities. This is of crucial importance to Indian cities today as 100 cities have recently been designated as Smart Cities along with the reconceptualisation of heritage cities announced in 2014. As such the project lies at the intersection of academia and policy and this is reflected in the ways in which the project has been designed. The network will be of practical relevance to four groups in India.

a) Government departments/agencies particularly the Minorities Commission, National Institute of Urban Affairs (NIUA) and Niti Aayog (erstwhile Planning Commission); Stakeholders in this group often see marginalised citizens as potential recipients of policy rather than active and contributing citizens in shaping the future of their cities. The network will ensure the visibility of the contribution of marginalised citizens to parallel urban histories and grassroots utopias and enable a more nuanced and collaborative approach to including ordinary in India's future urbanization. The network will in particular provide information about the multiple ways that a city can be remembered, experienced and imagined and thus raise consciousness of the presence of alternate utopias among this group of stakeholders. It is expected that their interaction with other stakeholders in the workshops will enable representatives from government to become more receptive to citizen participation in shaping India's future cities.

b) Arts and heritage organisations: Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH), Sangeet Natak Academy (Chandigarh), Budhan Theatre (Ahmedabad). The network will provide information on the disconnect between the utopian blueprint and the intangible heritage vested in urban life at street level; on the relative successes of citizen transformations of the built environment into grassroots utopias; and on how a sensitivity to social differences can sustain or disrupt the utopian city. In particular it will provide an understanding of the meaning and nature of 'heritage' vested in citizenship practices and how these can be incorporated into the heritage of future cities.

c) Built environment professionals such as architects and planners will find the network of relevance since it will provide an arena via the workshops to discuss the design and planning of future cities with potential 'clients' - that is those who might actually inhabit these cities. This is significant in professional practice where architects and planner often have to second guess the requirements of the users and hence produce blueprints that aim to solidify a particular set of universal social relations. Interacting with citizens in the workshops will allow professionals to challenge their own 'expert' knowledge and accommodate a diversity of approaches in future urban planning. this form of knowldge exchange in the long run can displace neoliberal regimes of urbanizaion with more socially just production of grassroots utopian cities.

d) Third Sector organisations: Abhivyakti (Nashik); Chhoti si aasha (Chandigarh), Saksham Trust (Chandigarh), Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolann (BMMA) Mumbai; the network will provide a space for collaboration and knowledge exchange relevant to policy advocacy and citizen participation. It will allow stakeholders in this group to reflect upon teh learning process that shapes active and productive citizenships that can then feed into the making of more inclusive cities of the future.