Periurban Cartographies

Periurban Cartographies looks through the prism of the "almosturban" to consider what a "city" is or could be. In doing so, the bookchallenges assumptions and reconsiders design practices. The research reported upon in this study draws on thickdescription of everyday life and diffuse power in periurban GangeticWest Bengal/Kolkata. It does so in the hope of enriching ourunderstanding of incremental modes of political empowerment andthe futures they make. The intention is to not just communicate thetransformations at work in creating a particular "kind of urban," butalso to point to connections that make us rethink the ways in whichchange happens. The book is a contribution to work being done on urban theory-building from elsewhere than the Global North, specifically fromAsia, and periurban Gangetic West Bengal/Kolkata. It is not simplya look at a novel and singular condition in and of itself but uses thatsingularity to better understand periurbanism generally and urbanpolitical ecologies particularly. Current scholarship in urban politicalecology reminds us of some of the enduring tensions around the conceptualizations of region, socio-natures and agency, andpractice. The urban political ecology approach in this book offers away of moving past some of these tensions.