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Making of high‐tech H yderabad: Mapping neoliberal networks and splintering effects
Author(s) -
Das Diganta
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
singapore journal of tropical geography
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.538
H-Index - 42
eISSN - 1467-9493
pISSN - 0129-7619
DOI - 10.1111/sjtg.12112
Subject(s) - global city , restructuring , urbanism , government (linguistics) , world class , creative class , economic growth , economy , political science , business , economic geography , geography , economics , architecture , creativity , engineering , industrial engineering , linguistics , philosophy , archaeology , law
Over the past few decades, cities and city regions have become the core of the global economy. Regional governments are increasingly drafting city development policies and implementing them through various visioning documents with the aim of making cities more global, networked and competitive. Welfarist governments especially in the global South are becoming increasingly entrepreneurial, and in the process poor citizens are getting pushed to the margins, evicted from their land and relocated to city fringes. Hyderabad in I ndia provides an interesting illustration of neoliberal development trends in which poor local farmers are forced off their land to make way for a ‘world‐class’ knowledge enclave, popularly known as C yberabad. This paper examines the policies and processes by which the regional government has sought to brand Hyderabad as a world‐class information technology destination and to restructure and reimagine it as a key node in a network of ‘globally connected cities’ of the world. It also considers the making of C yberabad in terms of splintering urbanism, which is often understood as a defining feature of contemporary neoliberal urban processes.