Middle-class Imagination and Urban Restructuring in Twenty-first Century Kolkata

Special Issue: Urban Classes in Comparison

This article provides an overview of the way in which post-liberalization urban restructuring is determined by middle class imaginations and lifestyles in Kolkata, India. It charts how the conjunction between planning, politics and private investment made middle class hegemony in the new urban politics possible, and how the processes that have been set in motion create new spatializations according to class through exclusions and reformulate citizenship as social relationships are redefined in the language of markets.