Author: Nair Janaki

Place: New Delhi

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Year: 2007

Volume: of niversip 8

Pages: 454

ISBN: 019569044-3

Subject: Urbanisation

Sub-Subject: Urban Studies

Keyword: Urban Planning

Classification: 711.4

Shelf: C4R4

Accession No: B683

Contents: Abbreviations List of Photographs List of Maps List of Tables Acknowledgements Introduction Where Does the City Begin? One: Bengaluru/Bangalore: The Presence of the Past Two: Remembered and Imagined Cities Three: Conceiving the City: Master Planning and Informal Power Four: The Map is not the Territory: Law and the Production of Space Five: Past Perfect: Architecture and Public Life Six: Language and the Right to the City Seven: Battles for Bangalore: Re-territorializing the City Eight: The Body Politic: Gender and the Practise of Power Conclusion: Is Singapore Bangalore’s Destiny Notes Select Bibliography Index

Abstract: *The Promise of the Metropolis: Bangalore’s Twentieth Century* traces Bangalore’s transformation from colonial cantonment and princely capital to global IT hub. Blending history, spatial theory, and cultural analysis, it examines how memory, planning, law, architecture, language, and politics shape the city. The book explores tensions between master plans and informal power, legal regulation of space, architecture’s role in public life, and gendered urban participation. Through maps, photographs, and documents, it presents Bangalore as both aspirational and contested. Concluding with comparisons to Singapore’s controlled growth, it questions what such a model might gain or sacrifice in shaping the modern Indian metropolis.