Water governance and the colonial urban project : the Dharmambudhi lake in Bengaluru, India

Unnikrishnan, Hita and B., Manjunatha and Nagendra, Harini and Broto, Vanesa Castán (2020) Water governance and the colonial urban project : the Dharmambudhi lake in Bengaluru, India. Urban Geography. pp. 1-26. ISSN 1938-2847

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Abstract

This paper uses the example of a lost urban lake – the Dharmambudhi within the south Indian city of Bengaluru to illustrate the profound and long-standing effects of historical sociotechnical infrastructural change. We demonstrate processes by which capitalist urban development and notions of the sanitary city in the nineteenth century led to the collapse of the lake system and its conversion into a bus station. We also show how by removing the use of the water body, it became possible to destroy a critical urban ecological infrastructure, thus making it unusable to people who depended upon it to sustain their lives and livelihoods. This coupled with technocratic narratives of efficiency and scarcity led to the co-opting of the resource rendering them separate from urban life.

Item Type:	Article
Authors:	Unnikrishnan, Hita and B., Manjunatha and Nagendra, Harini and Broto, Vanesa Castán
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Techno-managerial urban development, social-ecological systems change, water infrastructure, Bengaluru, Sanitary cities
Subjects:	Natural Sciences > Life sciences; biology > Ecology
Divisions:	Azim Premji University - Bengaluru > School of Development
Full Text Status:	Restricted
URI:	http://publications.azimpremjiuniversity.edu.in/id/eprint/2158
Publisher URL:	https://doi.org/10.1080/02723638.2019.1709756

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