Overwhelming Ahmedabad meets insurgent public space

Cities can be articulated as the densest expressions of infrastructure. Be it the traffic-congested roads of Bangalore or Beijing, the unavailability of drinking water in informal settlements of Mumbai or Lagos, or the extensive and crowded public transport networks of Mumbai or London, these anecdotes are all varied experiences of the infrastructure – urbanisation connect. In contemporary times everyday urban life is intrinsically connected with the infrastructure systems, hence increasing dependency on infrastructure is implicit in the process of urbanisation. In recent decades, globally, cities have witnessed extreme changes in their urban and social makeup because of rapid urbanisation (751 million in 1950 to 4.2 billion in 2018). This raises the question on the nature of urban development and further on the infrastructural building's nature. Unlike many of its global south counterparts, India is only 33% urbanised. Hence, infrastructure building will continue to be a key focus. This development trajectory, coupled with the inequality that plays a critical role in Indian urbanisation, tends to distort the infrastructure-urbanisation connection. Under these circumstances, infrastructure becomes the site/tool/medium to propagate urban inequality through exclusionary practices of building and the consequent use of infrastructure, giving rise to a situation best explained by ' 'Orwell's famous phrase, "all are equal, some more than others". This paper is located as part of an already rich literature on the infrastructural theme. By studying the case of Ahmedabad, it aims to understand the dynamics of infrastructure and urbanisation. By spatial mapping of the everyday violation of infrastructure, it is possible to understand the inherent problems in everyday living culture in the big Indian cities and read the values and criteria to define a site-specific and cultural approach for coherent future urbanisation.