A discussion about the association between space, power and human inhabitancy in an age of new urbanism: Differential claims from Kolkata, India

Abstract

First world spaces within third world cities emerge as a consequence of the uncontrolled injection of capital. In this age of new urbanism, cohabitation becomes a concern which demands discussion. Therefore, the basic objective of this research has been to capture the spatial interface of class and inhabitancy, within an understanding of the ‘right to the city’ concept, in the way it exists in the city of Kolkata, India. The argument has been developed by spatially segregating the city in terms of economic cores and peripheries and subsequently cores within cores and peripheries, and peripheries within cores and peripheries. The argument concludes with the understanding that, to those occupying different physical realities of the city, poverty or the lack of it, inhabitation or the lack of it, and rights or the lack of them are everyday existential truths and thus the claims are not directed towards an inter-category shift but are more intra-category in nature, given the categorical realities of each individual citizen (or, rather, ‘city’zen).