What is right for the City or Right to the City: Criticality of Citizenship and Governance

Amidst the scramble of global investment capital, climate change and SDGs, there is an explicit nod towards the exigency of helping cities to function right. A ‘political deficit’ has characterised the urban development literature across the world’s emerging and developed economies. This is largely reflected in the absence of engagement across civic and community groups in dealing with proposed changes being orchestrated in the cities. For example, the announcement of Belfast to Bangalore, Deyang to Surat and Durban to Rio de Janeiro as the Rockefeller Foundation sponsored ‘Resilient Cities’ is a case in point. Simultaneously, the UN Habitat III – Urban (2016) mandated ‘leaving no one behind’. Encouraging cities to engage with urban managers is a challenge towards inclusion and the cohesion of city policy frameworks. Maintaining distributional justice and, simultaneously, managing the integrity of metropolitan cities is a challenge. This chapter establishes the key contours of critical urban development debates by drawing examples of urban governance and citizenships globally. Getting the social, cultural and political right is a key challenge in framing the principles of trust and collaboration within the framework of cities. Therefore, situating the local in the transformation of urban governance is critical for the cities of India.