Govind Gopakumar, “Installing Automobility: Emerging Politics of Mobility and Streets in Indian Cities” (MIT Press, 2020) (2020)
Automobiles and their associated infrastructures, deeply embedded in Western cities, have become a rapidly growing presence in the mega-cities of the Global South. Streets, once crowded with pedestrians, pushcarts, vendors, and bicyclists, are now choked with motor vehicles, many of them private automobiles. In Installing Automobility: Emerging Politics of Mobility and Streets in Indian Cities (MIT Press, 2020), Govind Gopakumar examines this shift, analyzing the phenomenon of automobility in Bengaluru (formerly known as Bangalore), a rapidly growing city of about ten million people in southern India. He finds that the advent of automobility in Bengaluru has privileged the mobility needs of the elite while marginalizing those of the rest of the population. Gopakumar connects Bengaluru’s burgeoning automobility to the city’s history and to the spatial, technological, and social interventions of a variety of urban actors. Automobility becomes a juggernaut, threatening to reorder the city to enhance automotive travel. He discusses the evolution of congestion and urban change in Bengaluru; the “regimes of congestion” that emerge to address the issue; an “infrastructurescape” that shapes the mobile behavior of all residents but is largely governed by the privileged; and the enfranchisement of an “automotive citizenship” (and the disenfranchisement of non-automobile-using publics). Gopakumar also finds that automobility in Bengaluru faces ongoing challenges from such diverse sources as waste flows, popular religiosity, and political leadership. These challenges, however, introduce messiness without upsetting automobility. He therefore calls for efforts to displace automobility that are grounded in reordering the mobility regime, relandscaping the city and its infrastructures, and reclaiming streets for other uses.
...MoreBook Govind Gopakumar (2020) Installing Automobility: Emerging Politics of Mobility and Streets in Indian Cities.
Similar Citations
Book
Govind Gopakumar;
(2020)
Installing Automobility: Emerging Politics of Mobility and Streets in Indian Cities
Article
Volti, Rudi;
(2008)
A car for the great Asian multitude
Book
Peter Norton;
(2021)
Autonorama: The illusory promise of high-tech driving
Book
Timothy Moss;
(2020)
Remaking Berlin: A History of the City through Infrastructure, 1920–2020
Book
Wells, Christopher W.;
(2012)
Car Country: An Environmental History
Article
Govind Gopakumar;
(2020)
Regime of Congestion: Technopolitics of Mobility and Inequality in Bengaluru, India
Book
Mathieu Flonneau;
(2016)
L'automobile : au Temps des Trente Glorieuses: Un Rêve D’automobilisme [Automobile During the Glorious Thirties: Automobilism’s Dream]
Book
Jonathan Silver;
(2023)
The Infrastructural South: Techno-Environments of the Third Wave of Urbanization
Book
Simanti Dasgupta;
(2015)
BITS of Belonging: Information Technology, Water, and Neoliberal Governance in India
Book
Tarini Bedi;
(2022)
Mumbai taximen : autobiographies and automobilities in India
Book
Michal Ďurčo;
(2021)
Cesty a diaľnice na Slovensku v medzivojnovom období: Nástup automobilovej doby v znamení prvej Československej Republiky
Book
Lundin, Per;
(2008)
Bilsamhället: Ideologi, expertis och regelskapande i efterkrigstidens Sverige
Chapter
Berger, Michael L.;
(1992)
The car's impact on the American family
Book
Wachs, Martin;
Crawford, Margaret;
(1992)
The Car and the city: The automobile, the built environment, and daily urban life
Article
Lundin, Per;
(2004)
American numbers copied! Shaping the Swedish postwar car society
Book
Stefan Höhne;
(2021)
Riding the New York Subway: The Invention of the Modern Passenger
Article
Pei-San, Shih;
(2013)
Watch Out for Cars: The Car Accident Discourse of Shenbao in Shanghai, 1921--1937
Article
Jethron Ayumbah Akallah;
(2022)
Wells and Boreholes: Resilient Water Provision in Nairobi
Book
Matthew N. Eisler;
(2022)
Age of Auto Electric: Environment, Energy, and the Quest for the Sustainable Car
Thesis
Zhou, Fang;
(2010)
The Wheels That Transformed the City: The Historical Development of Public Transportation Systems in Shanghai, 1843--1937
Be the first to comment!