Infrastructural Inequality in the Global City - Rukmini Raghu

Infrastructural Inequality in the Global City A Study of Hyderabad, India

Pilot Thesis Rukmini Raghu Lucy Cavendish College

Essay 2 4,952 words A design thesis submiBed in parDal fulďŹ lment of the requirements for the M.Phil. in Architecture & Urban Design 3 April 2018

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Acknowledgements I would like to thank Ingrid Schröder, MAUD course director, and Aram Mooradian, MAUD design tutor, for their insight and guidance. I would also like to thank Felipe Hernandez and Benedicte Foo for all of their advice and support thus far.

Words Text – 4,952 Bibliography & Figures – 1,669

This disserta+on is the result of my own work and includes nothing which is the product of collabora+on except where specifically indicated in the text.

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Contents Introduction.............................................................................................5 I The Global City: A ‘Supermodern’ Vision...........................................7

The Global City

Inter-city Referencing

Hyderabad’s Global City Vision

The Special Economic Zone: A Core in the Periphery

Is I.T. The New Coloniser?

II Beyond the Special Economic Zone................................................17

The Cyberabad Development Authority

Order & Legibility

Restructuring of the City III Alternative Urbanisms......................................................................25

Urbanism of Trading

Colonial Hybridity

The Sultan’s Bazar

The Middle Class

Alternative Imaginaries Conclusion...............................................................................................35 Bibliography.............................................................................................36

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Fig 1: Contemporary mega development in Hyderabad : a new express way.

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Introduction Hyderabad is aBempDng to leapfrog itself to the coveted status of a global city. Like many of its Asian peers, the state government has been invesDng heavily in the growth of technology and knowledge based sectors to the exclusion and detriment of its heterogeneous populaDon. The city was once a ourishing trading capital where informality was tolerated and encouraged by ambiguous Islamic property laws. During colonialism, Hyderabad remained a princely state that collaborated with the BriDsh colonisers to its advantage. Post-independence, the state was violently brought into Indian dominion and named Andhra Pradesh. The city has passed through shi^ing powers, adapDng and absorbing to changing poliDcal and social condiDons to become a product of negoDated hybridiDes consisDng of overlapping layers of infrastructures and cultures.

Today, the state leaders mimic the urbanisms of the West and successful Asian ciDes, establishing exclusive Special Economic Zones with special incenDves for (American) tech mulD-corporaDons. Simultaneously, large-scale urban infrastructure is being constructed to project an image of First World development. However, global parDcipaDon seems to come at the cost of an equal and fair city.

My research aims to employ post-colonial theory to quesDon the dominance of an epistemology of urban planning that promotes context-less copy-paste urbanism.

Simultaneously, the associated design project seeks to ďŹ nd an alternaDve form of infrastructure through a greater understanding of indigenous forms of local urbanism that more o^en than not producDvely reproduce the innovaDons of globalisaDon. 5

Fig 2: Saskia Sassen’s influential The Global City (1991).

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I The Global City: A ‘Supermodern’ Vision

The Global City In 1991, Saskia Sassen criDcally idenDfied a common set of characterisDcs in New York, London and Tokyo. In doing so, a benchmark of contemporary urban development was created and categorised as the global city - a city essenDally defined by a spaDally concentrated set of central funcDons that support and resource naDonal and global markets and their parDcipaDng organisaDons.

The concept of the global city emerged amidst a global trend of economic neoliberalism. The increased economic interdependence between naDons and “the specific forms assumed by globalizaDon over the last decade have created parDcular organizaDonal requirements. The emergence of global markets for finance and specialized services, the growth of investment as a major type of internaDonal transacDon, all have contributed to the expansion in command funcDons and in the demand for specialized services for firms” (Sassen, 2005). In the interest of expanding and supporDng the global economy, ciDes across the developed and developing world have been and are being restructured to form specialised infrastructural hubs.

Inter-city Referencing InternaDonal standards and rankings, such as the GlobalisaDon and World CiDes Research Network, emerged to rate ciDes according to a parDcular set of criteria that define how global they are or, in other words, to what extent a city serves and contributes to the global financial and service market (Friedman, 1986). The creaDon of parochial rankings has resulted in developing ciDes aBempDng to emulate an arguably socially constructed aestheDc1 model that is derived mainly from Western ciDes. However, globally successful Asian ciDes, such as Singapore, are increasingly becoming references for inter-city urban policy transfer in the developing world. Ong (2011) argues that this trend can be aBributed to the way in Ghertner (2011) argues the aestheDc of the world city is socially produced drawing from Ranciere (2004).

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Fig 3: The Asian Global city: Singapore.

Fig 4: Hyderabad - a developing global city

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which these ciDes represent “replicable models of an urban futurity that does not find its ulDmate reference in the West.”

Much of Singapore’s success is due to its investment in the technology and knowledge based industries. With few natural resources, Singapore was poised to capitalise on its need to exploit a global market in order to aBain economic success.

Incrementally funnelling money into infrastructure, both physical and virtual, and special economic zones, the state ‘leap-frogged’ its economy and status into the ‘first world’ (Huat, 2011). Singapore became a brand and the success derived from aBracDng foreign investment into I.T. oriented incubaDng zones was now an aBainable model for aspiring global ciDes that lack the resources of ciDes such as Dubai.

Hyderabad’s Global City Vision Hyderabad, India, a former trading capital pre-colonialism, has been remaking itself in the image of the global city over the last twenty years. A^er independence, the state of which it was capital, Andhra Pradesh, had a closed economy that was mainly dependent on a declining agricultural sector. However, in the 1990’s, a process of economic liberalisaDon led to a significant devoluDon of poliDcal power in India (Das, 2014). The state was now responsible for the development of its territory through its own entrepreneurial efforts. Looking to examples such as Singapore, Andhra Pradesh turned its aBenDon to transform Hyderabad into a world-class global city in order to capitalise the benefits of the global market. As Karri (2014) notes, this was set into moDon by the “then Andhra Pradesh’s chief minister, Nara Chandrababu Naidu, his laptop, an integrated transformaDon vision and so^ware exports” resulDng in an explosive “transformaDon unmatched for any city in India’s history.”

The state commissioned the internaDonal consultancy McKinsey & Company to create Andhra Pradesh Vision 2020 (1999) which outlined an aspiraDonal restructuring of the state and its economy through the idenDficaDon of nineteen growth engines. The report emphasised that the opportuniDes made available due to global advancements in the knowledge sector and informaDon technology would allow the state to “make quantum leaps” and “leapfrog several stages of 9

Fig 5: Excerpt from AP Vision 2020

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development”. The impact of McKinsey’s “technologically utopian”2 jargon, which inherently suggests that leaps are required to catch up to first world standards, is evident in Andhra Pradesh’s implementaDon of Vision 2020. While the report idenDfied twelve growth engines in agriculture and industry, the state’s resources have mainly been directed towards developing the seven growth engines in the services sector to the detriment of the Hyderabad’s hinterland. For example, unpredictable weather condiDons and a lack of government support resulted in an huge 320% increase in farmer suicides between 2014 and 2015 due to desperaDon regarding growing debts (Samdani, 2017).

Andhra Pradesh is one of many states that McKinsey have consulted on as development advisors. Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Mumbai and many other developing ciDes feature on the company’s client list. As ciDes increasingly follow a near idenDcal development trajectory, it is perhaps perDnent to quesDon the influence of one large private sector organisaDon that creates and proliferates an authoritaDve knowledge (Roy, 2011) of urban development that is ulDmately selfreferenDal. McKinsey was instrumental in the development of the two main precedents, Singapore and more influenDally Kuala Lumpur, suggested for Hyderabad’s growth.

The use of Asian models in inter-city referencing quesDons to what extent these models of development find their origins in the West. It is o^en wriBen that modernity and its signifiers were Western concepts inscribed on to the global South through colonial or ideological means. Contemporarily, this noDon is represented by the reproducDon of the Silicon Valley model in Asia through the creaDon of technology and knowledge based zones on the periphery of ciDes. Tellingly, Bangalore is touted as the Asian Silicon Valley further implying Asia’s role as the mimicking3 subject of the West. However, as Roy (2011) rightly points out, it is important to challenge the idea of “borrowed” urbanisms. Mitchell (2000) notes, “various modern forms of industrial producDon, spaDal organisaDon, and subjectformaDon were invented and perfected in the colonies.” Western signifiers have been re-interpreted, translated4 and appropriated by local logics creaDng what Hosagrahar (2005) idenDfies as “indigenous moderniDes”. Contemporarily, this is

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Bunnell & Das (2010)

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Bhabha (1994)

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Benjamin (1984)

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Fig 6: Cyber Gateway in HITEC City

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illustrated by the Special Economic Zone phenomenon which is now a recognisable characterisDc of developing global ciDes parDcularly in Asia. Clearly derived from the Silicon Valley model, the SEZ, deployed to aBract foreign investment, has evolved into a new typology and is now more immediately associated to Asian ciDes such as Shenzhen.

The Special Economic Zone: A Core in the Periphery In 1998, the government of Andhra Pradesh entered a public private partnership with Indian mulD-naDonal Larsen & Toubro and invested $350 million dollars into establishing an SEZ on the periphery of the city named HITEC (Hyderabad InformaDon Technology and Engineering Consultancy) City (Ramachandraiah & Prasad, 2008). Simultaneously, in a bid to aBract investment into the burgeoning zone, state policies were introduced between 1999 and 2005 offering incenDves to businesses in the I.T. industry (Das, 2015).

As is the case with most SEZs, HITEC City is equipped with world-class infrastructure that stands in stark contrast with the inadequate public infrastructure of Hyderabad. Fibre opDc links with high speed internet access and a dieselgeneraDng staDon guarantee exempDon from the regular power outages faced by the rest of the city. The zone is a microcosmic global city and the equivalent of a “geo-bribe” (Smith, 2002) designed for seemingly integral contributors to the global financial and service market. As Graham & Marvin (2001) note: “within high-value spaces colonised by users that are intensively internaDonal and even global in their operaDons…aBenDon now centres powerfully on equipping city districts with the best possible infrastructure to link the local into the global matrices of flow through powerful connecDons elsewhere.” The infrastructure of basic necessiDes, such as waste and water, are also superior.

There are severe inequaliDes between the infrastructure provided to HITEC City and the rest of Hyderabad. This discrepancy creates an urbanism of exclusion and consequently a subaltern class. In this situaDon, post colonial studies and deconstrucDon gain a renewed relevance in the analysis of the social consequences of this development. In a criDque of the interpreted role of deconstrucDon, Spivak (1993) states that deconstrucDon, rather than focusing on the ‘decentered’ subject (the subaltern), “considers that the subject always tends toward centering.” During 13

colonial Dmes, the centre was the Western coloniser and its imported urbanisms.

While the SEZ has hybridised and is not a purely transplanted Western urbanism, it is arguably a renewed effort at creaDng a new centre in the “terra incognito or terra nulla”5 (Bhabha, 1994) of the periphery.

Is I.T. the New Coloniser?

Through the proliferaDon of Special Economic Zones such as knowledge parks and technology enclaves, I.T. has quickly become the common denominator of Asian urban development. As Easterling (2015) notes, “a number of new branches of research involving informaDon/communicaDon technology and development have been roughly assembled under the rubric of “ICT4D,” or ICT for development.” As evidenced by McKinsey’s development plans, I.T. oriented development is a major element in the authoritaDve urban development discourse. Accordingly, HITEC City was structured and branded primarily to aBract foreign investment6 from so-called big ‘tech’ and now boasts Microso^’s largest research and development facility outside of the U.S. Cheap labour made India extremely aBracDve for transglobal outsourcing and offshoring for the I.T. sector. To support the requirements of these global operaDons, physical and virtual space was restructured prioriDsing global-local connecDons and creaDng what Augé (1995) calls ‘non-places’ to construct ‘supermodern’ spaces of flow (Koolhaas and Mau, 1994; Castells, 1993). Ravishankar, Pan & Myers (2013) argue that the phenomenon of I.T. offshoring in India is “embedded within the context of the longstanding imbalances of power in the relaDonship between the West and the East.” This imbalance is further emphasised by the way ciDes in the Global South are perceived as “megaciDes, big but powerless” (Roy, 2011) in relaDon to the global ciDes of the First World.

The “megarhetoric of developmental modernisaDon” (Appadurai, 1996) and trickle down benefits are o^en used to jusDfy the physical ‘splintering urbanism’ of I.T. oriented zonal development (Graham & Marvin, 2001). However, as Graham and

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Terra incognito or terra nulla translates to the empty land or the wasted land.

It was recently reported that 693 acres of government land was transferred to private companies from 2011 ‘in exchange for large bribes’ (Sudhir, 2017) - an example of common bureaucraDc corrupDon. 6

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Marvin (2001) note, this form of development causes further urban fragmentaDon and socio-economic disparity in developing ciDes mirroring the results of colonial infrastructural policies and modernist urban planning.

Increased global connecDvity has led to the inter-city referencing of hybridised urbanisms such as the Special Economic Zone. The state’s making of the zone, HITEC City, reveals colonial parallels and renews the applicability of post-colonial studies in understanding the local consequences of urban development driven by global standards. As I.T. dominates authoritaDve urban development theory, it is imperaDve to understand the consequences faced by the new subaltern class in a Dme of visibly increasing socio-economic disparity. The following secDon will explore some of the speciďŹ c infrastructural and architectural products of the Hyderabad’s urban restructuring and their impact on the local populaDon.

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Fig 7: Cyberabad Development Authority Masterplan

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II Beyond the Special Economic Zone

The Cyberabad Development Authority In 2001, the Cyberabad Development Authority was created to govern a new fi^ythree square kilometre municipality called Cyberabad encapsulaDng HITEC City and seventeen surrounding villages (Ramachandraiah & Prasad, 2008, Das 2014). The new city-zone included I.T. corporaDons, such as Google, Amazon, Accenture as well as educaDonal insDtuDons, such as the Indian InsDtute of InformaDonal Technology.

AspiraDonal and luxury developments, such as an EMAAR 7 golf course, mushroomed transforming the zone into a city of the affluent. Consequently, land prices rose and high registraDon costs started pricing out the urban poor as well as the middle class (Ramachandraiah & Prasad, 2008).

The new developments are at odds with the nature of their host city. Currently, one can find mulD-storey offices, street vendors, five star restaurants, markets, new mega infrastructure, neglected infrastructure, slums, etc. entangled at the edges of Cyberabad's boundary. This heterogeneity is representaDve of the historic and contemporary urban fabric of the rest of the city. Cyberabad’s new developments ideologically and physically follow the homogenous aestheDc of the Asian (and American) global city branded with buzz words like “smart”, “innovaDve”, “hub”, “superior living”, etc. High rise apartment blocks, glass and steel technology enclaves, shopping malls and utopian gated communiDes dominate the landscape.

Order & Legibility The quest for a raDonal urban landscape reveals the state’s desire for Western influenced administraDve legibility (ScoB, 1998) which is intensified in the InformaDonal Age. ScoB strongly criDcises a range of historic state experiments for their social failures including the city of Brasilia which was constructed to raDonal urban planning ideals under the modernising mission of the 1960’s in communist Brazil. Today, democraDc governments enhanced by I.T. developments now aBempt EMAAR ProperDes is a real estate development company based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

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Fig 8: ‘Tactile sterility’ of Cyberabad

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to achieve the same kind of total spacial control which is increasingly within reach due to the unprecedented capability to log and store data. AddiDonally, models for parochial data gathering inevitably find their reference in the West which results in a lack of comprehension of local context The physical translaDon of the desire for control can be seen in the securiDsaDon of space within and around the new developments of Cyberabad. Nayer (2015) explores this urbanism through his descripDon of the ‘interdictory spaces’ around the boundaries of offices/campuses: Gates and security booths are located right at the perimeter, pracDcally abuyng onto the road. Barriers and cameras immediately suggest spaces that are marked off and separated from the public space of the road. Access to the inner spaces is obviously a mulD stage process where one has to prove idenDty, get photographed and documented first. Only the serious visitor in other words, is allowed access. One does not see vagrants, beggars or loiterers anywhere in the vicinity, which seems at least to me, a scene so unlike any Indian city.

These levels of surveillance are typically associated with the state security and as Keller Easterling (2014) notes, are “virtually indisDnguishable from military space” resulDng in spaces of “tacDle sterility” to borrow the words of Richard Sennet (1994). As I.T. firms replicate the control methods of the authoritarian state, this private sector becomes a dominant force which in turn creates hierarchies of power.

The ordinary Indian ciDzen is now the equivalent of a subject. So-called public space is sterilised with perfectly manicured lawns and a lack of shade-giving trees.

Through the privaDsaDon and erasure of public space, the integral heterogeneity of Hyderabad is being acDvely discouraged and marginalised.

The periphery of the city offered a clean slate onto which infrastructure could be constructed with liBle public resistance. Cyberabad is arguably an intense amalgamaDon of urban experimentaDon through which imaginaries for the rest of the city are tested. Deemed an economic success despite its social failings, the aestheDcs and ideals of the global city are replicated in the wider city. Mirroring the shi^ing of administraDve boundaries in HITEC city, the state has altered the municipal boundaries of Hyderabad expanding the metropolitan boundary from an 19

HITEC City

Airport

Fig 9: Map of major developments in Hyderabad

Major developments in Hyderabad Key Outer Ring Road MMTS Metro Rail Flyover works

Cyberabad Development Authority Boundary

Developing enclaves Developing cultural zones Transport oriented development Green areas Water bodies

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area of 1861 km2 to around 7228 km2, (Das, 2014) through the creaDon of a new planning body called Hyderabad Metropolitan Area (HMDA).

Restructuring of the City Physically, three key urban trends reveal the state’s desire to restructure Hyderabad in the image of the global city to the detriment of its local condiDons.

The first is a mulDplicaDon of SEZ’s on the peripheries of the city which has been shown to be exclusionary in the prototypical Cyberabad. Pursuing urban order, the city’s urbanism is oriented towards ’the expansive urbanity of a ’city of enclaves’” Stavrides (2015).

The second trend is the development of peripheral mega-infrastructure. A new 5-15 million person capacity airport has been constructed at the southern boundary of the city. Located twenty-one kilometres from the city centre, the development adheres to the generic glass and steel global airport aestheDc. Billboards within the airport reinforce the narraDve of world-class development with heavy emphasis on luxury living. The airport is connected to the city and its peripheries through a new 159 kilometre outer-ring road and expressway. The 4-8 lane elevated megastructures are maintained at a high standard and are lined with an impenetrable so^ green border at ground level. These £50 million infrastructures privilege global actors by providing easier access to the centre of the city (and notably Cyberabad). The cost of the displaced urban poor, as the obstrucDng urban fabric is razed, is considered necessary in the quest for ‘supermodernity.’

The third trend is the development of mega-infrastructure within the city. A new elevated metro rail, the Hyderabad Metro Project, is currently nearing compleDon. Made possible through a public private partnership between the government and Larsen & Tourbo8, the project has been embroiled in poliDcal and financial scandal.

CriDcism from local academics such as Dinesh Mohan (2008) and C. Ramachandriah (2008), present the development as a subopDmal traffic soluDon and, more worryingly, as an exercise in land acquisiDon for private real estate development.

The contract for the project was iniDally awarded to two local real estate

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Larsen & Tourbo was also involved in the construcDon of HITEC City.

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Fig 10 & 11: Construction of the Hyderabad Metro Rail

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companies, Navbharat and Maytas, with no experience in metro rail construcDon or operaDon. The project seemed to be manipulated in order to promote Mayta’s peripheral developments which were branded as, “most high-value gated communiDes”, “a world unlike any you’ve ever known”, “modern workspaces for global work styles where shopping malls, schools, medical faciliDes, recreaDonal centres will be essenDal features” (C. Ramachandriah, 2009). However, following the collapse of its parent I.T. company, Satyam Computers following revelaDons of financial foul-play, the contract was transferred to Larsen & Tourbo - the company that had also been instrumental in the construcDon of the Delhi Metro.

The project consists of three elevated lines that together span seventy-two kilometres with staDons planned roughly every kilometre. The mission statement of Hyderabad Metro Rail (HMR) reads, “To create an efficient, safe, reliable, economical & world class public transportaDon system in Hyderabad which will facilitate the city's transformaDon as a compeDDve global city with high quality of life.” The emphasis of this public infrastructure project seems to be on the transformaDve power on the global image of the city as opposed to its local benefits. This aytude has drawn criDcism from local acDvists and has resulted in violent public protests.

The appearance of a privaDsed and exclusionary project is further emphasised by the investment of £250 million into exoDc greening to be planted beneath the metro viaduct essenDally dividing the city and disembedding the local context.

As Hyderabad ‘self-worlds’ (Roy, 2011) as part of a movement towards “Asian centring” (Roy, 2013), the city becomes increasingly fragmented. Infrastructural mega-projects reshape the city for the benefit of the elite and privilege global corporaDons. In an aBempt to rethink urban development in Hyderabad, the next secDon will explore urbanisms that run counter to western urban development theory and how they might be exploited to re-imagine infrastructure in the context of Hyderabad.

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Fig 12: Charminar: the centre of old Hyderabad

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III Alternative Urbanisms Hyderabad’s ‘supermodern’ pursuit of world class city is resulDng the the displacement of several integral localisms. This secDon will explore one localism in parDcular, the bazar and thereby the informal economy, to beBer understand its historical role in the city. This will be followed by an analysis of the Sultan’s Bazar in parDcular in order to understand its contemporary significance and the way in which this parDcular typology may inform an alternaDve approach to urban infrastructure in Hyderabad.

Urbanism of Trading Throughout Hyderabad’s history of poliDcal and economic change, the bazar has not simply endured - it has thrived. In 1591, the planned city of Hyderabad was established on the banks of the Musi River following overpopulaDon at Golconda Fort. Built on the success of a flourishing trading economy, the city featured monuments that stood as testaments to its power and fortunes. TradiDonally authoritaDve urban moves such as wide roads were employed however, they were allowed to be appropriated. The largest of these roads is now one of Hyderabad’s oldest working bazars occupying the colonnades that lead to Hyderabad’s most famed monument, Charminar or Four Minarets.

Such appropriaDons were made possible through Islamic property law which recognised, “‘rights to a single floor or even a single room or even a porDon of a single room... rights to use, but not sale of property, rights during one’s life Dme which then revert to others.’’ (Abu-Lughod, 1980 cited in Naidu, 1990, p.39) The possibility of flexible sub-division of space allowed a variety of people to find an economic foothold in the city. Ambiguous property boundaries also allowed for the subdivision and appropriaDon of public space encouraging economic and trading diversity.

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Fig 13: Map of formal and informal transport infrastructure in Hyderabad

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Colonial Hybridity During colonisaDon, Hyderabad’s significant wealth allowed it to remain a princely state under the Nizam’s rule. However, threats of invasion from neighbouring states forced the Nizam to seek out the protecDon of the BriDsh military and thus form the Subsidiary Alliance Treaty in 1781 (Naidu, 1990). The alliance brought a BriDsh residency, and a new cantonment was developed in the twin city of Secunderabad along with BriDsh railway infrastructure. The new development aBracted traders to the north of the river and a new entrepreneurial bazar formed around the Residency and its surrounding infrastructure to serve the BriDsh resident, his employees and the area’s growing populaDon. This two hundred year old bazar, now called the Sultan’s Bazar, is the product of hybridity, a concept developed by Homi Bhabha in The LocaDon of Culture (1994).

Bhabha deconstructed the colonial power as a homogenous enDty and argued that through a process of iteraDve arDculaDon, the intersecDon between the colonised and the coloniser produced a ‘Third Space’ with ‘producDve capabiliDes.’ The Sultan’s Bazar was an evoluDon of the bazars of the old city in the new city. The intense interacDon between two heterogeneous cultural idenDDes created an urban idenDty that, as Simone (2001) argues, was necessary in the colonial city ‘in order to keep engagement going.”

The Sultan’s Bazar Today, the bazar operates as a wholesale market (amongst other funcDons) within the city and acDvely engages with the rest of the state. “Thousands of small business people from the surrounding Telangana districts purchase goods in bulk from these markets and earn their livelihoods back home.” (Ramachandriah, 2011).

The bazar is a welcome link to the rural populaDon and is the anDthesis of exclusive contemporary zonal developments. Simone (2004) argues in the context of the African city, where the state infrastructure is inadequate, informal acDvity tends to respond to immediate local needs and provide what is missing. This resilient responsiveness is illustrated in many aspects of the informal economy. It is widely wriBen9 that the social interacDons that are necessarily a part of exchanges within the bazar, provide a form of social security to the most marginalised of the

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See Simone (2004) and Keshavarzian’s (2007) analysis of Tehran Bazar.

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Fig 14 & 15: The metro being contstructed in Sultan’s Bazar despite protests

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populaDon. In addiDon to this, to compensate for poor transport infrastructure, auto rickshaws operate shared routes which have become an aBracDve mode of transport due to their flexibility and affordability. At a larger scale, it is widely recognised that the informal economy is a large contributor to the naDonal economy. “Urban Street Vending is not only an important component of the tradiDonal Indian bazar, an essenDal urban service provider, but also a contributor of 30-40% to the naDonal economy” (Mitra 2006).

The bazar is also an acDve reproducer of the global market. In Delhi, Nehru Place is a market that Sennet (2018) referred to as a “down market version of Silicon Valley” where “tech startups occupy cramped rooms next to computer repair shops and cut-rate travel agents.” In this one market, global economic forces trickle through the bazar typology through stolen, pirated or diverted goods and are made accessible to a much wider range of people. The example of Nehru Place, one of many such markets, stands in stark contrast with the widely proliferated global Special Economic Zone model. Where the bazar typology produces a producDve informality, the SEZ forces an informality that is a result of exclusion and marginalisaDon. Cross (2010) aptly describes SEZs as “unexcepDonal spaces that make legible, legiDmate and visible the condiDons of informality and precariousness under which most acDvity already takes place in South Asia.”

The zone, as a representaDve of the global market, and the informal sector are inextricably and ambiguously interlinked and interdependent. However, due to a dominant epistemology of urban planning, this ambiguity is increasing discouraged and designed out of the city. The existence of Sultan’s Bazar is currently under threat due to the state’s metro rail project. Despite widespread protests, the viaduct of the metro is being constructed through the arterial road of the bazar. The displaced are to be rehoused in a ‘hawker’s heaven’ which will essenDally be a shopping mall showing a systemic misunderstanding of the workings of informality.

Different permutaDons of this situaDon exist in the so-called Global South emphasising the growing call for a new epistemology of urban planning by Robinson, Roy, Simone and many other prominent academics.

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Fig 16: Map of illegal construction in Hyderabad

Illegal Constructions Key

Areas of illegal construction showing # of illegal structures Green areas Water bodies Cyberabad Development Authority Boundary

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The Middle Class The middle class occupy an ambiguous intersDce between the spectrum of formal and informal. On one hand, the middle class are keen to exploit the advantages of the informal economy thereby encouraging its growth. On the other, the Indian middle class is aspiraDonal and supports the governments worlding thereby laying an exhibiDonary “claim to the benefits to liberalizaDon” (Fernandes, 2006). In my own personal experience, I have found that there is a compeDDve tendency to compare local infrastructure and urbanism to other global ciDes as a maBer of naDonalisDc pride. However, in a blurring of dichotomies, the middle class are increasingly involved in informal/illegal construcDon acDvity on the periphery of Cyberabad amongst other locaDons as a result of frustraDon with excessive bureaucracy. Suares (2014) reports, “since the GHMC [Greater Hyderabad Municipal CorporaDon] has not been giving building construcDon approvals, some realtors, with the help of town planning authoriDes and local poliDcians, including corporators and local MLAs, complete the construcDon.” The middle class has created a new ambiguity straddling the formal and informal and it may be that a soluDon to the increasing exclusion of the informal economy may be found in the exploitaDon of this ambiguity.

AlternaQve Imaginaries

In the pursuit of an architectural and urban response to the situaDon described in this paper, I have chosen to site the associated design project on the periphery of Cyberabad. The bazar typology reveals a way in which to reimagine infrastructure development - a way in which infrastructure and the informal economy can capitalise on their codependence. As a starDng point, I propose three alternaDve strategies (or a combinaDon of them) outlined and illustrated on the following pages.

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MMTS Suburban Rail

Ayappa Society

HITEC City

Fig 17: 1 Strategic incremental interventions (shown in bright red, yellow, green and blue) to provide a foothold for the informal economy 32

Fig 18: 2 Grassroots infrastructure: a proposal for a new ‘station’ along the under-used MMTS suburban rail to reconnect those displaced during the construction of Cyberabad 33

Fig 19 & 20: 3 Occupation of the space beneath the metro viaduct by bazar functions 34

Conclusion Sassen’s concept of the global city challenged the idea “that place no longer maBered to highly digiDzed economic sectors” (Sassen, 2016) Instead she argued that the digiDsed world was incredibly dependent on local condiDons and the infrastructural roots lain at strategic global nodes. Growing acts of cyber warfare have exposed how fragile and vulnerable the global networked economy is. The insecurity of digital space is physically manifesDng in the privaDsaDon and securiDsaDon of public space. This urban sterilisaDon is being proliferated into the wider city through the construcDon of large scale infrastructural projects such as the Hyderabad Metro Project. Worryingly, elements that do not fit into the narraDve of the innovaDve and progressive global city are designed out.

Post-colonial theory is especially relevant in this situaDon. As global ciDes are arguably colonised by a corporate digital empire, the deconstrucDve work of academics such as Bhabha and Spivak point to locaDng and acDng within the ambiguous intersDces and boundaries of the authoritaDve power in order to contest their dominance.

In light of this ‘worlding’ of Asian ciDes (Ong 2011) (Roy,2011), many academics such as Ananya Roy, Jennifer Robinson and Abdou Maliq Simone are also calling for a reappraisal of urban epistemology as they unveil the pracDces of everyday life in the Global South uncovering ingenious local logics in the process. As “the thrills of the bazaar are traded for the conveniences of the sterile supermarket” (Chakraborty, 2004), there is a need to reestablish the place of producDve informality.

The associated design project seeks to propose an alternaDve infrastructure in the context of a Hyderabad that is constantly engaged in global flows, interacDons and exchanges to find a situated globalism. Upcoming fieldwork will seek to understand a ‘socio-technical system full of its own intelligences and arrangements’ (Amin, 2016), to find ways of criDcally absorbing globalisaDon and challenge dominant narraDves to make for a more inclusive city.

35

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List of Figures Figure 1: Contemporary mega development in Hyderabad : a new express way.

[Photograph] At: hBp://www.newindianexpress.com/galleries/naDon/2017/nov/27/ in-pictures--hyderabad-readies-for-global-entrepreneurship-summit-2017-asivanka-trump-lands-in-the-101057.html Figure 2: Saskia Sassen’s influenDal The Global City (1991). [Photograph] At: hBps:// images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51ZtNy9lgCL.jpg Figure 3: The Asian Global city: Singapore. [Photograph] At: hBps:// www.thousandwonders.net/Singapore Figure 4: Hyderabad - a developing global city. [Photograph] Available at: hBps:// assets.entrepreneur.com/content/3x2/1300/20170228052303-HyderabadFinancial-districtIndia.jpeg Figure 5: Excerpt from AP Vision 2020 [Screenshot] Available at: hBps:// www.scribd.com/doc/33166412/Andhra-Pradesh-Vision-2020-full-document Figure 6: Cyber Gateway in HITEC City [Photograph] Available at: hBp:// www.nccs.co.in/images/water-proofing/43hyd3/cyber_gateway-hi-tech-city-b.jpg Figure 7: Cyberabad Development Authority Master Plan 2001 [Masterplan] Available at: hBp://kicsforum.net/kics/KD/ram-07.JPG Figure 8: ‘TacDle sterility’ of Cyberabad [Photograph] Available at:hBp:// www.thehansindia.com/posts/index/Hans/2016-02-16/Swachh-BharatHyderabad-gets-19th-rank/207540.

Figure 9: Map of major developments in Hyderabad [Map] Produced by Author Figure 10: ConstrucDon of the Hyderabad Metro Rail [Photograph] Available at:hBps://s3.ap-southeast-1.amazonaws.com/cdn.deccanchronicle.com/sites/ default/files/hyderabad%20metro%20work_0_0_5_0_0_0_1_0_0.jpg Figure 11: ConstrucDon of the Hyderabad Metro Rail [Photograph] Available at: hBp://indiarailonline.com/three-years-on-hyderabad-metro-rail-project-headingnowhere/ Figure 12: Charminar: the centre of old Hyderabad [Photograph] Available at: hBp:// www.southreport.com/wp-content/uploads/ 2015/04/019PHO0000430S6U00006000SVC2.jpg Figure 13: Map of formal and informal transport infrastructure in Hyderabad [Map] Produced by Author in collaboraDon with Studio MADe (2014) Figure 14: The metro being constructed in Sultan’s Bazar despite protests [Photograph] Available at: hBps://www.thenewsminute.com/sites/default/files/ sultan%20bazar.jpg

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Figure 15: The metro being constructed in Sultan’s Bazar despite protests [Photograph] Available at: hBp://www.tlivetv.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/ protest.jpg Figure 16: Map of illegal construcDon in Hyderabad [Map] Produced by Author Figure 17: Strategy 1 [Drawing] Produced by Author Figure 18: Strategy 2 [Drawing] Produced by Author Figure 19: Strategy 3 [Drawing] Produced by Author Figure 20: Strategy 3 [Drawing] Produced by Author

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