From London to Mumbai and Back Again: Gentrification and Public Policy in Comparative Perspective

Abstract

Gentrification has become a global phenomenon over the past 15 years and has been understood as an increasingly important strategy within neo-liberal policy-making. Focusing on London and Mumbai, this paper details how public policies and planning regimes have been reconfigured and rescaled to facilitate and encourage new property speculation. However, against more generalised and abstract accounts of the neo-liberal city, the paper uses its comparative perspective to emphasise the geographically and historically specific manifestations and effects of gentrification processes. By highlighting different forms of state intervention and sharper socio-spatial impacts in Mumbai, the paper challenges the Eurocentric framing of a global spread of gentrification and argues that Mumbai can act as an important source of learning for gentrification research.