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| Srl | Item |
| 1 |
ID:
158933
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| Summary/Abstract |
This article examines how unstable land on a sandy peninsula in peri-urban Mangaluru becomes part of urban land contestation to primarily support continued informal tenure. The peninsula is undergoing shifts changing both its shape and land use under the influence of a range of biophysical and human forces. For the time being, fisherfolk can remain in place despite lacking land documents, but much of the peninsula has been proposed for commercial development projects. The sand-spit thus becomes a frontier for variegated land claims part of urbanization processes where the variable ‘nature’ of land is enmeshed. Drawing on urban political ecology and Indian land governance literature, the article highlights how the fluctuating land supports continued informality since the shifting sands make boundaries challenging to delimit and maintain, and, once stabilised, can be claimed by the state. The informalising characteristics of land, understood as an ‘informality machine’, reinforces similar ongoing urban transformations along the entire coastline, to mainly favour elite interests, but can also be seized upon by the fisherfolk themselves for new claims, or workarounds aimed at securing long-term tenure. Future research on the urban land question would do well to include a perspective of land as co-constituted by socio-natural processes.
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| 2 |
ID:
140394
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| Summary/Abstract |
This paper uses an urban political ecology analysis to question the discourses used by Thai government leaders about the causes of the 2011 floods in Bangkok and the solutions that they have proposed in response. In contrast to their argument that the main causes of the floods in Bangkok were climate change and nature, it argues that the causes of the 2011 are compound. They are a result of human-nature interactions: while Thailand did receive heavy rainfall that year, a number of human activities interacted with this heavy rainfall to create the floods. During the past few decades, local political elite have risen to power and profited the most from Bangkok’s urbanization activities while changes to the physical environment of Bangkok made those living there more vulnerable to floods. These activities include massive land use change and concretization which drastically increased run-off, over-pumping of groundwater and the filling of canals. During the past few decades, the local political elite profited the most from Bangkok’s industrialization and urbanization activities while changes to the physical environment of Bangkok made those living there more vulnerable to floods. Further, both the local and national’s government overreliance on antiquated and poorly-maintained infrastructure made the city more vulnerable to the 2011 floods. In 2011, human decisions, particularly by politicians, about where to direct and block water heavily influenced which groups were most vulnerable. As a result, the inner city were protected at the expense of those living in the city’s peripheral areas. Further, the low institutional capacity of the state, at both the local and national level, diminished the state’s capacity to reduce the risks of floods. Analyses of disasters in urban areas need therefore need to consider how discourses, socio-political relations, and ecological conditions shape governance practices of disasters.
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