Publics@IIHS | Exploring the Speculative City with Carol Upadhya

Carol Upadhya, Honorary Visiting Professor at the National Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS), Bengaluru, presented at Publics@IIHS on the book Chronicles of a Global City: Speculative Lives and Unsettled Futures in Bengaluru, co-edited with Vinay Gidwani and Michael Goldman. Her talk draws from the 'Speculative Urbanism' research project conducted at NIAS from 2017–2020, examining how finance capital, real estate markets, and livelihood struggles are remaking Bengaluru and its peri-urban communities. The book moves away from the city's familiar narratives of the IT industry, the new middle class, and nostalgic histories, to ask what urban transformation looks like from the ground up, through the lives of construction workers, street vendors, small farmers, and petty landlords who aspire, struggle and speculate to find a place in the city. She highlights how speculation operates not just as financial risk-taking, but as imagination and anticipation — the active envisioning of urban futures, and the everyday cost of those futures for communities, ecologies, and livelihoods. Moderated by Sudeshna Mitra, Associate Dean, IIHS School of Economic Development, the discussion asks who the speculative city is being built for, and what it leaves behind. Find her book here: https://www.upress.umn.edu/9781517917...