Trying to Be “Sustainable” and “Global”: Ahmedabad and the Sabarmati River Front Development Project

Abstract

The recent celebrations for the 600th anniversary of the foundations of the city of Ahmedabad in 2011 represented a crucial moment during which a reflection on the past of the city was combined with a strong push towards future changes. While the city centre was proposed for the nomination as a UNESCO heritage site, new large development projects started to appear both at the core and in the outskirts of the largest city of Gujarat. The Sabarmati River Front Development Project represents one of the most important investment sites for both public institutions and privates, as well as a translation on the ground of the city vision to become both “global” and “sustainable”. Combining a large body of interviews with current debates about globalisation, politics of scale and political ecology, the paper aims at highlighting different narratives and their role in shaping the future Ahmedabad. The paper pays particular attention to the importance of the State in the creation of “new state spaces” (Brenner, 2004), thus contesting its loss of relevance in the age of globalisation and in the “space of flows” (Castells, 1996).