The Speculative Frontier: Real Estate, Governance and Occupancy on the Metropolitan Periphery

What is urban about the peri-urban? This paper explores the speculative frontier of volatile real estate investments and exceptional and transitional forms of local government that characterize this peri-urban terrain. By definition lying outside the municipal norm of the metropolitan core, the peri-urban frontier that is outlined in this analysis through a novel database of large-scale investments in residential and commercial capacity across India represents an arena where the statutory definition of the urban, i.e., elected municipal governance, is politically contested. Drawing on case studies of Greater Hyderabad and Noida in the Delhi National Capital Region, this paper traces the divergent modalities of peri-urban government. In Greater Hyderabad, the trajectory leads to institutional fragmentation. In Noida, it results in the concentration of powers in non-representative agencies. In either scenario, I argue that the speculative frontier remains hostile to claim-making by poor groups through the channels of occupancy, even as it empowers propertied classes.