Mumbai on Two Wheels: Cycling, Urban Space, and Sustainable Mobility (Global South Asia) - Softcover

Anjaria, Jonathan Shapiro

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0295752696 ISBN 13: 9780295752693

Publisher: University of Washington Press, 2024

Synopsis

Cyclists from India reimagine transportation infrastructure for all

Mumbai is not commonly seen as a bike-friendly city because of its dense traffic and the absence of bicycle lanes. Yet the city supports rapidly expanding and eclectic bicycle communities. Exploring how people bike and what biking means in the city, Jonathan Shapiro Anjaria challenges assumptions that underlie sustainable transportation planning. Arguing that planning professionals and advocates need to pay closer attention to ordinary people who cycle for transportation or for work, or who choose to cycle for recreation, Mumbai on Two Wheels offers an alternative to the thinking that dominates mainstream sustainable transportation discussions. The book’s insights come from bicycle activists, commuters, food delivery workers, event organizers, planners, technicians, shop owners, and architects. Through ethnographic vignettes and descriptions of diverse biking experiences, it shows how pedaling through the city produces a way of seeing and understanding infrastructure. Readers will come away with a new perspective on what makes a city bicycle friendly and an awareness that lessons for a more equitable and sustainable urban future can be found in surprising places.

About this title

About the Authors

Jonathan Shapiro Anjaria is associate professor of anthropology at Brandeis University. He is the author of The Slow Boil: Street Food, Rights, and Public Space in Mumbai (Stanford University Press, 2016); and coeditor of Urban Navigations: Politics, Space and the City in South Asia (Routledge, 2011).

Padma Kaimal is Batza Professor of Art and Art History at Colgate University. She is the author of Scattered Goddesses: Travels with the Yoginis (Association for Asian Studies, 2013) and Opening Kailasanatha: The Temple in Kanchipuram Revealed in Time and Space (Washington, 2021).

Kalyanakrishnan "Shivi" Sivaramakrishnan is Dinakar Singh Professor of India and South Asia Studies, professor of anthropology, professor of forestry and environmental studies, and codirector of the Program in Agrarian Studies, Yale University.

Anand A. Yang is professor of international studies and history at the University of Washington. He is coeditor of Interactions: Transregional Perspectives on World History (Hawai'i, 2005), coeditor of Thirteen Months in China: A Subaltern Indian and the Colonial World (Oxford, 2017), and author of Empire of Convicts: Indian Penal Labor in Colonial Southeast Asia (California, 2021).

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Washington Press
• Publication date: 2024
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0295752696
• ISBN 13: 9780295752693
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 258