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The meanings and practices of space shape how cities are understood and governed. This article argues that space is central to understandings of mobility and practices of regulation in the city. Undertaking an analysis of the regulation of Muslim pilgrims (Hajis) in colonial Bombay (Mumbai) from 1880 to 1914, this article explores urban governance discourses around race, religion and public health at a variety of scales. It investigates the way that Hajis were problematized through these discourses, and targeted as threats to elite power and prosperity in the specific context of Bombay as a global shipping and economic hub. I conclude that elite conceptions of the city shape the governance of problematized bodies in ways which reinforce the meanings and politics of mobility and space. Elite understand ings of movement and the city itself shape the practices and targets of urban regulation and control.

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In this article, we draw attention to the geographies of “land use,” which to date have been underexamined and undertheorized within urban geographical literature. To do so, we review insights from a growing set of literature in geography, urban planning, law, and socio‐legal studies, among others, to outline how urban space is shaped through the relationships between land use, planning, property, and law. We first look at the relationships between land‐use planning and power relations in place. We go on to focus on the law, and the ways in which it structures and controls land use, property, and social activities in the city. We conclude by reviewing how law and legal concepts can serve as instruments of resistance and a source of alternate futures in urban spaces. In sum, we argue that a deeper interrogation of land use, and its relationships to planning, property, and law, can lead to a better understanding of how liberal‐democratic cities operate, and offer tools for resisting opaque and legalistic land‐use planning programs.

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