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This book presents a systematic analysis of the differential implementation of the urban reforms in two Indian cities, Ahmedabad and Kanpur. It analyses the enactment of the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM), launched in 2005 by the Indian government, which aimed to spatially reorient cities into market-friendly places across 65 cities but finished with only modest success.

The volume discusses the specificities of urban governance systems, colonial municipal histories and nationalist struggle in relation to urban planning and policy reforms to showcase how policies insensitive to these are likely to fail. It identifies historically constituted municipal capacity - located in the municipal organisation at the city level - as the key determinant of divergent trajectories of the spatial changes. The analysis demonstrates that in Ahmedabad the politics of the city was historically oriented towards peoples' relationship with their spaces, enabling a coherent municipal organisation. In the case of Kanpur, however, the local politics evolved in a way that the urban question remained unresolved, which resulted in a fragmented municipal organisation. This variation in the architectures of municipal organisations in the two cities resulted in different levels of municipal capacities at the time of the inauguration of the JNNURM.

A richly detailed case study on urban governance issues and development in Indian cities, this book will be an essential read for scholars and researchers of urban studies, urban politics, development studies, social anthropology, social history, political science, development studies, public policy and governance, urban sociology and South Asian studies.