The Metonymic Urbanism of Twenty-first-century Mumbai

Over the past decade, Mumbai has increasingly been understood as representative of new forms, trajectories and processes of 21st-century urbanism. This has been a welcome rejoinder to a continued predominance of North American and European cities within international urban research and debate. Yet it is important to query what theory cultures and geographical imaginations have been mapped onto Mumbai in this recent emphasis on the city. This paper argues that, unless Mumbai’s specificities and grounded realities are used to disrupt and reframe existing urban analysis, there is a risk of replicating the comparative perspectives and visions of élite policy-making. This does not mean conferring paradigmatic status on Mumbai or isolating Mumbai as an exceptional form of contemporary urbanism, but instead generating new theoretical dialogue and opening up new channels of urban research and policy formation within a wider world of cities.