Neoliberalism and Urban Sphere: Contextualization and Impacts on the Urban Spaces of the Global South

Abstract

The urban space was the epitome of rationality, functionality, and efficiency in the post-war period which got transformed into market flexibility, horizontal functional integration, and global-level efficiency with processes like outsourcing giving effect to spatial rationality and integration. The principle of marketability has allowed the space for the local governance to rescale, reorganize, and restructure itself. Urban space in the global south has the phenomenon of ‘Accumulation by Dispossession’, but this process created new opportunities for the dispossessed people to participate in the incoming opportunities. In the local context of the Global South Neoliberal policies in the urban space have a differential impact on different sections of the urban populace as they perpetuate the marginality in certain cases, especially socio-economic lower strata, and provide new opportunities for the other well-off sections. The Government adopted a new restructured approach to welfare and the urban governance role has not been insignificant as the impact of neoliberalism would have been more devastating to the marginal section of the urban population especially in the global south if the State and local government had completely abdicated its functions of welfare and completely fall in the line of market principle.