Urban as Palimpsest: Neoliberal Environments, Fishing Livelihoods, and Toxic Landscapes in Mumbai, India

Abstract

This paper illustrates the significance of the palimpsest as a conceptual and representational tool to analyze urban transformations over time. Focusing on urbanization in Mumbai, India, this paper examines the growth of the service sector through the re-shaping of an urban periphery. Based on qualitative field-based research for ten months in 2015–16, I examine how Malad, formerly a periphery dotted with fishing villages became a service sector hub, and an area epitomizing Mumbai’s urban modernization. Through a series of collages, I illustrate changes in Malad’s urban morphology resulting from a long history of colonial and postcolonial land transactions that facilitated infill and land reclamation, and their acceleration since the 1990s. The layers of the palimpsest make visible the environmental and livelihood damage in the form of toxicity, reduced fish availability and loss of other environmental resources, otherwise absent in the dominant narrative surrounding Malad’s transformation. Through the palimpsest, embodied environmental associations of livelihood and loss are uneasily juxtaposed with narrower neoliberal conceptions of sustainability that frame service sector development. I show how the palimpsest as an analytic can represent the power nexus embroiled in transforming urban environments with repercussions on urban ecological systems and erase embodied associations of indigenous communities.

本文阐述了作为一种概念性和代表性的工具来分析城市随时间变化的重要性. 本文以印度孟买的城市化为研究对象，通过对城市外围的重新塑造，考察了服务业的增长. 基于2015年至2016年为期十个月的定性实地研究，我考察了Malad’s如何成为服务业中心，以及孟买城市现代化的缩影. 通过一系列拼贴画，我阐述了由于殖民地和后殖民地土地交易的长期历史，促进了填充和土地复垦，以及自20世纪90年代以来的加速，Malad’s城市形态的变化. 复本的层次使环境和生计损害以毒性、鱼类可利用性降低和其他环境资源损失的形式显现出来，否则在围绕Malad’s转变的主导叙事中就不存在. 通过重复，体现了生计和损失的环境关联不易与框架服务业发展的狭隘的新自由主义可持续性概念并置. 我展示了作为一个分析的剩余物如何能够代表在城市环境的改变中卷入的权力关系，对城市生态系统产生影响，并抹去土著社区的具体联系.

Este trabajo ilustra la importancia del palimpsesto como herramienta conceptual y representacional para analizar las transformaciones urbanas que ocurren a través del tiempo. Concentrándose en la urbanización de Mumbai, India, este artículo examina el crecimiento del sector de los servicios a través de la reconfiguración de la periferia urbana. Basándome en investigación cualitativa de campo de diez meses, en 2015-16, examino el modo como Malad, antes una periferia moteada de aldeas de pescadores, se convirtió en un núcleo del sector de servicios, y en un área que encarna la modernización urbana de Mumbai. Por medio de una serie de collages, ilustro los cambios de la morfología urbana de Malad, cambios que son la resultante de una larga historia de transacciones coloniales y poscoloniales del terreno, las cuales facilitaron el relleno y la recuperación de tierras, y su aceleración desde los años 1990. Las capas del palimpsesto hacen visible el daño ambiental y del bienestar en forma de toxicidad, reducción de la disponibilidad de peces y pérdida de otros recursos ambientales, de otro modo ausentes en la narrativa dominante que caracteriza la transformación de Malad. Por medio del palimpsesto, las asociaciones ambientales personificadas de sustento y pérdida, se encuentran yuxtapuestas con inquietud a las concepciones neoliberales estrechas de sustentabilidad que enmarcan el desarrollo del sector de los servicios. Muestro cómo puede representar el palimpsesto como analítica el nexo del poder enredado en transformar entornos urbanos con repercusiones sobre los sistemas ecológicos urbanos y borrar asociaciones personificadas de comunidades indígenas.

Key Words:

• collage
• environmental change
• palimpsest
• toxicity

关键词:

• 拼贴
• 环境变化
• 重复的
• 毒性

Palabras clave:

• cambio ambiental
• collage
• palimpsesto
• toxicidad

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to my research participants in Mumbai’s fishing villages for their time and insights, as well as incisive feedback from Karen Paiva Henrique and the participants in the Urban Climates workshop at Cambridge.

Notes

1. Thanks to Jeenal Sawla, whose undergraduate thesis in architecture first demonstrated to me how powerful the palimpsest was as a tool in exploring and visualizing alternative histories and their resultant built environment.

2. The fishing village residents had heard that the security guards were being paid $15 [₹1000] a day, wages the residents considered extremely high. I was unable to independently verify this information.

3. My research participants had heard that real-estate developers instigated middle-class residents to file litigations. I was unable to independently verify this information.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Society of Woman Geographers.

Notes on contributors

Aparna Parikh

APARNA PARIKH is an Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH 03755. E-mail: [email protected]. Her research interests include critical and creative approaches to gendered dimensions of urban environmental belonging in South Asian cities.