How Rent Shapes Our Cities

Описание: Cartels, Control and the Making of a Housing Market
Aug 13, 2022
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We live in cities whose borders have always been subject to expansion. What does such transformation of rural spaces mean for cities and vice-versa? Properties of Rent: Community, Capital and Politics in Globalising Delhi (Cambridge University Press, 2022) is a book that traces how two villages in Delhi’s southern fringe were brought into the urban fray in the 1950s. As the agricultural lands were acquired, the ‘village lands’ were left as is. This resulted in the villagers witnessing rapid urbanisation happening all around them.

The book tells the story of how the villagers use their kinship and caste networks to establish control over the village lands which slowly become pockets for manufacturing and cheap housing. While focused on Delhi, the book essentially looks at the housing problem that most of our cities have been experiencing. Due to a lack of public housing, migrants to the city are often subject to renting small spaces exclusively constructed for the same. It straddles the story of urban speculation and violence, but one that is told through transition of a landed community and their negotiations – a process that isn’t quite unknown in any city today.

A presentation by Sushmita Pati, the author of the book 'How Rent Shapes Our Cities' followed by a discussion along with Carol Upadhya and Mathew Idiculla in conversation with Atreyee Majumder.