This book provides a pioneering study of the historical interaction between the city and the natural environment from the colonial to the contemporary era in South Asia.
The book provides a multidisciplinary analysis examining the environmental history of the city and bringing together contributions from environmental experts and practitioners as well as academics. Focusing on case studies stretching from the Maldives and Sri Lanka to the Indian subcontinent, the chapters trace linkages between the contemporary and earlier patterns of urban expansion and their environmental effects and consider lessons that can be drawn with respect to preventing future environmental degradation and mitigating the effects of climate change.
An important contribution to the field, this book studies the contemporary environmental issues arising from rapid South Asian urbanization. It will be of interest to researchers in the field of South Asian studies, world history, and environmental history.
Author(s): Ian Talbot, Amit Ranjan
Series: Routledge Advances in South Asian Studies
Publisher: Routledge
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 205
City: London
Cover
Half Title
Series
Title
Copyright
Dedication
Table of Contents
List of Figures
List of Tables
List of Contributors
Preface
Acknowledgements
Introduction
PART 1 Urban Pasts, Contemporary Legacies
1 Partition, the Environment, and the Early Post-Independence Development of Lahore
2 Written in Stone: Political Geologies of Small-Town India
3 A Shift From the “Devotional” to the “Natural” in Nineteenth-Century Lahore’s Art Education
4 Building With a Conscience? Heritage, Design and Urban Space in Bombay
PART 2 The City and River Management
5 The Hooghly River and the Incomplete Mastery of the Natural World in British Colonial India
6 Political Economy of Dams in Colonial and Early Postcolonial India
7 Locating the Riparian Commons in Eastern South Asia: A Translocal Perspective
PART 3 Urban Growth in a Fragile Environment
8 Evolving Islandscapes in a Changing Climate: Male’ City, Maldives
9 Analysing Human–Environment Coexistence: Urban Development and the Colombo Wetland Complex
10 Vanishing Rains: Deforestation, Declining Rainfall, and Desiccation in North East India With Special Reference to Cherrapunji, the “Rainiest Spot on the Globe"
11 Reconstructing Thimphu: Balancing Tradition and Transition in Bhutan
Index
