On-the-Go Settlements: Understanding Urban Informality Through Its Digital Substructure

Abstract

This article investigates the digital networks within informal settlements in Delhi through an ethnographic and practice-based research methodology. 1 By studying top-up and media consumption at the ubiquitous phone recharge shop and uncovering the persistence of video game parlours in squatter settlements, the article presents the subversive, low-tech nature of this digital nexus. It looks at the parallels and intersections between the networked realities of these technologies and the alternative model of urbanism offered by the informally built areas where they thrive.

Towards a genuinely humanizing smart urbanism

“…Such speculative future making needs to be grounded in local context: there can be no one size fits all utopian future smart city, as work considering smart cities around the globe makes clear (Datta and Shaban, 2017;Karvonen et al, 2018;Coletta et al, 2019). Indeed, what the smart city means for states and low income and slum dwellers in sub-Saharan Africa (Watson, 2014), Colombia (Talvard, 2019), and India (Datta, 2015(Datta, , 2018Rangaswamy and Nair, 2012;Janu, 2017), and how future smart cities should, could and will unfold in the Global South is undoubtedly different to that of the Global North for all kinds of reasons (not least because they are starting from very different places and hold different values and customs). Which brings us to transforming the present future of smart cities.…”