The Moving City is a rich and intimate account of urban transformation told through the story of Delhi's Metro, a massive infrastructure project reshaping the city's social and urban landscapes. Presented as a series of ethnographic vignettes, Rashmi Sadana introduces the feel and form of the Metro and lets readers experience the city, scene by scene, stop by stop, as if they, too, have come along for the ride. It is a book that lays bare the radical possibilities and concretized inequalities of the Metro, how people live with and through the built environment, a story of women and men on the move, the nature of Indian aspiration, and what it takes morally and materially to sustain urban life. Through exquisite prose, Sadana transports the reader into a city shaped by its metro and those who depend on it, offering a revealing and unique perspective on Delhi unlike any other.
The Moving City Scenes from the Delhi Metro and the Social Life of Infrastructure
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Reviews
"A poetic narrative that dissolves the perception of Delhi’s Metro as hard infrastructure and embeds it in the life places that are remade, reconnected, and reconceived through this intervention. Most critically this book challenges us to nuance our imagination of infrastructure as an instrument through which urban cultures are formed and evolve."––Rahul Mehrotra, John T. Dunlop Professor in Housing and Urbanization at the Graduate School of Design, Harvard University"Richly researched and vividly written, The Moving City shows how high technology remakes urban spaces and citizens in the Global South. Rashmi Sadana’s ethnography portrays the social life of infrastructure to brilliantly illuminate the ambiguous promise of modernity in a megacity."––Amita Baviskar, author of Uncivil City: Ecology, Equity and the Commons in Delhi
"The Moving City reveals the impact of infrastructure on social life in the first decade of the Delhi metro system. With a careful ethnographic ear, Rashmi Sadana patiently listens to the everyday experiences of riders, and she renders these layered voices in vignettes that richly illuminate the affecting power of gendered stories. The result is a rich and distinctive contribution to the anthropology of contemporary urban space and place."––Steven Feld, Senior Scholar, School for Advanced Research
"The Moving City is a deft account of life on the Delhi Metro, an infrastructure that has radically reshaped Delhi by offering connectivity and a new kind of social space. Through thought-provoking descriptions of connections across scenes and lives, Sadana's ethnography reads lightly yet with insight and conviction."––Sarah Pinto, author of Daughters of Parvati: Women and Madness in Contemporary India
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