Urban Governance under Neoliberalism: Increasing Centralization or Participatory Decentralization

Abstract

Urban governance has become the buzzword for urban planning under the present trend of liberalisztion, globalization and privatization. Urban governance in general refers to a market-led entrepreneurial activity including risk-taking by the urban local bodies, though often argued as ‘maximum governance’ and ‘minimum government’. However, in the fray of attracting more and more international finance, it seems that, especially in the developing world, opposite is equally happening. The state adopts a proactive approach at identifying market opportunities for urban regeneration. In India, urban governance has been propagated by the national as well as international agencies as an approach that will make the create solutions for the existing problems of urban India. Governance on the one hand has resulted in withdrawal of state from various sectors conspicuously from housing and basic civic amenities. The New Economic Policy in India was introduced as a means of decentralization of administration, finance and function with greater autonomy to sub-national and urban local bodies. Over the period of last few decades, however, it has become clearer that resources, capital, investment and growth are increasingly getting concentrated in mega-cities of the country often at the cost of smaller towns and urban centres. This is quite contrary to the proclaimed objective of bringing decentralization. The present chapter emphasizes the state’s initiatives of urban rejuvenation programmes through analysing cases from India to understand the contemporary urban governance situation.