I knew nothing about the city of Gurgaon, India before watching this…. its current building boom…
Nonetheless, this video is a clear example of how worldwide discourses of ‘globalization’ often lack nuance. Notions of growth (w/o development) are largely unproblematized (they lead with talk of multinationals coming to the city)–as painted by interviews with urban planners, discussions of infrastructure, the problems with predatory developers, etc. the city comes across as a thing (the bourgeois project of modernity) instead of a complex organism (a la Jane Jacobs) or a human lived space (Lefebvre) (a panel member–Prof & Environmental Planner Darshini Mahadeva–voices this complaint in other words around minute 14:00-15:15).
urbanculturalstudies 
Reblogged this on Urban Choreography and commented:
What do we think when we imagine we can actually affect a large swathe of reality – seething with hundreds of thousands of living souls who all have volition and are actors struggling themselves ….
A colleague and I shared a car ride through Gurgaon last year, on our way back to the New Delhi airport. We were blown away. A stretch of land southwest of New Delhi, Gurgaon stands in incredibly jarring contrast to that city and other densely populated areas nearby: it’s a Lang-inspired metropolitan scene, replete with high-rises and skyscrapers, neon, and (globalized) brand-names.
Reblogged this on Rashid's Blog.