Introduction: Why Chinese and Indian Megacities?

Abstract

The rise of China and India to global economic powers has become a familiar story and remains a dominant headline, which intrigues scholars, journalists, and policymakers everywhere to ponder its wide and deep implications. Somewhat less known, however, is the phenomenon that the boom of China and India is symbolized and driven by their key megacities such as Shanghai and Mumbai. Even less understood is how Chinese and Indian megacities have transformed themselves as they boost the rapid growth of China and India. What may be least anticipated and appreciated is that how the transformation of Chinese and Indian megacities can inform and advance urban theory and research. The four articles in this special issue of City & Community constitute a focused and synthetic look at the dynamic and complex transformation of three Chinese and Indian megacities—Shanghai, Mumbai, and Kolkata. The empirical findings and theorizing in these articles make these cities timely cases for advancing urban research, especially on megacities that are rapidly globalizing. In this short introduction, I first highlight a few striking features of the Chinese and Indian megacities to establish them as critical cases for understanding the intersected local, national, and global forces of large-scale urban transformation. Then I draw the reader’s attention to a few highlights of the four articles that complement one another in moving the frontier of global megacity research. Sujata Patel’s summary and reflections after these articles will provide an authentic Indian voice of echo and extensions to the themes I touch on. More of a happy coincidence than careful planning, the four articles, through independent and parallel development, have converged onto a set of shared themes from somewhat divergent and discrete points of departure and analytical perspectives. They have done so either through an in-depth analysis of one Chinese or Indian megacity to prompt the reader to draw comparison, or via an explicit comparative investigation of a pair of megacities. The coupling of both approaches provides a twotiered explanation for the important differences and similarities between Shanghai and