Who owns the city? Neoliberal urbanism and land purchases in Gurgaon, India
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 10860844 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Meher Bhagia (0000-0001-7695-2276, The Pennsylvania State University, USA, corresponding author), Mallika Bose (0000-0002-4521-4964, The Pennsylvania State University, USA) |
| Year | 2024 |
| Volume | 61 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 445-461 |
| Publication date | 2024-02-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Urban Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0042-0980 • E-ISSN: 1360-063X |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/00420980231184784 |
| OpenAlex | W4384406893 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 29 |
Increasing purchases of valuable real estate for storing capital have contributed to the soaring prices of modest housing in many global cities and in several South Asian cities such as Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore. Saskia Sassen has drawn attention to the phenomenon of underutilisation of purchased properties existing alongside the acute demand for housing by low- and moderate-income households in the same cities. Despite the gravity of this issue, empirical analyses of urban land transactions remain rare, especially because such purchases often tend to be piecemeal and obscure, involving a multitude of smaller land deals and a variety of actors. This paper examines corporate purchases of urban land in Gurgaon, a city adjacent to New Delhi that has embraced neoliberal economic policies. By creating a land database for the upcoming sectors in the city, the study makes sharply visible: (1) the radical changes in property ownership patterns from agricultural land to luxury gated communities, (2) the growing corporate investments, extreme concentration of land ownership and deeply unequal distribution of urban land and (3) the use of various illicit practices by market-leading companies in land banking
Agricultural economics · Business · Development economics · Distribution (mathematics · Economic geography · Economic growth · Economics · Geography · Land use · Multitude · Political science · Real estate · Urbanism · Finance · Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism · Urban and Rural Development Challenges · Urban Planning and Governance
The Urbanism of Exception
The Difficult Character of Property
Financialization and housing
High Priests and the Gospel of Anti-Corruption
Cities for Profit
Neoliberalism and the Moral Economy of Fraud
The illegal, the illicit and new geographies of uneven development
Planning the Millennium City
India's new economic policy
The Rush for Land in an Urbanizing World
Cities in a world of villages
The Micro-Politics of Urban Transformation in the Context of Globalisation
Neoliberal Urbanization in Europe
The Urban Village, Agrarian Transformation, and Rentier Capitalism in Gurgaon, India
Land in urban debates
The illicit side of urban development
The urban land debate in the global South
Landscapes of Accumulation
Urban Informality
The 21st-Century Metropolis
Expulsions
Globalisation and the foreignisation of space
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1 |
| Citation span | 2025 - 2025 (1) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |