Installing Automobility - (Urban and Industrial Environments) by Govind Gopakumar (Paperback)

About the Book

"Automobiles are deeply embedded in Western cities. However, what's more significant is their rapidly growing presence in the megacities of the Global South. Scenes of streets choked with private vehicles are now a daily occurrence in many metropolises. Despite this, current scholarship has not adequately appreciated the significance of this shift toward driving. Prioritizing private motorized transport has a lasting impact on upon cities, and the decisions that establish that priority have gone largely underexamined. This book fills this gap by describing the introduction of the phenomenon of automobility in Bengaluru (a rapidly growing metropolis of about 10M people in southern India) that is rooted in historical experience and in the spatial, technological, and social interventions of a range of urban actors. The imbrication of these different facets, says Gopakumar, gives automobility its juggernaut-like quality that threatens to reorder the city for enhanced automotive travel. At the same time, he demonstrates that the edifice of automobility in Bengaluru is not a monolith but is a contingent achievement that is susceptible to continuous grinding down. Making novel connections between the fields of mobility studies, STS, and urban and environmental studies, this book offers important insights to scholars who recognize that streets are central to urban sustainability and equity, and that recovering streets from the grip of automobility could have large environmental and social benefits"--

Book Synopsis

An examination of the process of prioritizing private motorized transportation in Bengaluru, a rapidly growing megacity of the Global South.

Automobiles and their associated infrastructures, deeply embedded in Western cities, have become a rapidly growing presence in the mega-cities of the Global South. Streets once crowded with pedestrians, pushcarts, vendors, and bicyclists are now choked with motor vehicles, many of them private automobiles. In this book, Govind Gopakumar examines this shift, analyzing the phenomenon of automobility in Bengaluru (formerly known as Bangalore), a rapidly growing city of about ten million people in southern India. He finds that the advent of automobility in Bengaluru has privileged the mobility needs of the elite while marginalizing those of the rest of the population.

Gopakumar connects Bengaluru's burgeoning automobility to the city's history and to the spatial, technological, and social interventions of a variety of urban actors. Automobility becomes a juggernaut, threatening to reorder the city to enhance automotive travel. He discusses the evolution of congestion and urban change in Bengaluru; the "regimes of congestion" that emerge to address the issue; an "infrastructurescape" that shapes the mobile behavior of all residents but is largely governed by the privileged; and the enfranchisement of an "automotive citizenship" (and the disenfranchisement of non-automobile-using publics). Gopakumar also finds that automobility in Bengaluru faces ongoing challenges from such diverse sources as waste flows, popular religiosity, and political leadership. These challenges, however, introduce messiness without upsetting automobility. He therefore calls for efforts to displace automobility that are grounded in reordering the mobility regime, relandscaping the city and its infrastructures, and reclaiming streets for other uses.

Review Quotes

"Installing Automobility is a welcome addition to mobility studies, both in the context of India and beyond."
--Aparajita Mukhopadhyay, Technology and Culture, July 2022

About the Author

Govind Gopakumar is Chair and Associate Professor at the Centre for Engineering in Society at Concordia University, Montreal.