Organised by the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, with support from the Nalanda Professorship in India-China Studies.
CHAIRPERSON
Prof Tim Bunnell, Asia Research Institute, and Department of Geography, National University of Singapore
ABSTRACT
As two of the largest emerging economies in the world, China and India have experienced rapid urbanization in recent decades. In both countries, a substantial share of their urban population lives in unplanned residential areas known as informal settlements. These communities have increasingly become focal points of urban restructuring, yet the purposes, processes, and outcomes of such transformation vary significantly, with profound consequences for the livelihoods of hundreds of millions of urbanites. In this talk, Yue Zhang compares the redevelopment of two types of informal settlements: urban villages in Guangzhou and squatter settlements in Mumbai. She argues that divergent redevelopment trajectories are shaped primarily by different models of urban governance. Building on two key dimensions—effectiveness and inclusiveness—she develops a typology of urban governance (integrated, directive, contested, and transactional) to explain how governance configurations vary across countries and how this variation produces distinct spatial and social outcomes in China and India. Drawing on comparative historical analysis and extensive fieldwork, this talk situates redevelopment within broader national development pathways and offers new insights into urbanization, governance, and citizenship in the Global South.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Yue Zhang is Associate Professor of Political Science and Global Asian Studies at the University of Illinois Chicago. Her research lies at the intersection of comparative and urban politics, with a focus on development, urbanization, and globalization. She is the author of The Fragmented Politics of Urban Preservation: Beijing, Chicago, and Paris (University of Minnesota Press, 2013; Chinese translation, 2018) and The Myth of Informality: Housing Inequality and Urban Governance in China, India, and Brazil (Oxford University Press, forthcoming). She is Co-Editor of Urban Affairs Review and was Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C.
