Investigating Degenerated Peripheralization in Urban India: The Case of Water Supply Infrastructure and Urban Governance in Chennai

Abstract

Globalization is compressing the sequential spatial experience of environmental burdens in developing country cities through a process of space—time telescoping. With the introduction of neoliberal reform policies, Indian cities have also begun experiencing the effects of telescoped environmental burdens. A compelling theoretical perspective in this tradition suggests that large Indian cities now display a “degenerated peripheralization” whereby the experience of environmental burdens is becoming increasingly uneven between the urban core and its peripheries as a result of policy neglect. However, reliance on this theory overlooks how place-specific historical, social, and technical processes in the urban context often support a dynamic of active appropriation of resources from the periphery and core. Drawing on the histories of urban politicalization and the institutionalization of water supply infrastructure, this article will contextualize the process of peripheralization in the Indian metropolitan city of Chennai as an appropriative and exploitative one rather than a degenerated one.