Chronicles of a Global City: Speculative Lives and Unsettled Futures in Bengaluru

Tracking Bengaluru’s dramatic urban transformation through the entanglements of finance land frenzy real estate volatility and livelihood upheavalsOver the past two decades Bengaluru’s exploding real estate sector and massive infrastructure investments have led to land speculation targeting workingclass neighborhoods and agricultural land for development. Chronicles of a Global City turns Bengaluru inside out to examine its “worldcity” transformation that stimulated rapid urbanization and unbounded growth. Moving the spotlight away from the urban elites and “new middle class” this book explores how people caught up in the whirlwinds of change in Bengaluru—from construction laborers street vendors domestic workers and platform delivery workers to smalltime property brokers petty landlords and local politicians—experience struggle aspire invent strive and speculate to make a livable city for themselves.Grounded in longterm ethnographic research and activist experiences Chronicles of a Global City vividly illuminates the multifaceted entanglements of finance capital real estate markets livelihood struggles and fraying ecologies in urban and periurban Bengaluru. Its anchoring concept “speculative urbanism” provides a powerful innovative lens for understanding the riskladen practices of leveraging land labor and resources for the promise of future profit.