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80/ Roy, A. (2009b). Why India cannot plan its cities: Informality, insurgence and the idiom of urbanisation. Planning Theory, 8(1), 76–87.
While at present there appears to be a disjunction between grand expectations and acknowledged reality, the conceptual analytical neologism of contested urbanism is fundamental in depicting the materialdiscursive dynamics in the formation, transformation, and representation of social movement struggles over space. The “redevelopment opportunities” as witnessed through the DRP provide a platform for a productive discourse on informality to emerge – particularly its assets and value to be mapped and appreciated within the canonical theories of architecture and urbanism. This could re-politicize informality to reveal the importance of the futures of Dharavi and other “states of informalities” 80. While the by-product of this attention may be increased knowledge of informality, is it in the social struggles of the contested urbanisms that reside an opportunity to create new drivers of knowledge production – new priorities that fuel urban research and professional practice able to rethink the “right to the city.” Indeed, the conceptual apparatus of this study and its adaptation to the case of Dharavi seeks to repopulate and reinvigorate the call for a radical thinking on the powers of architecture and urbanism. For some readers familiar with post-Marxist literature on cites and the current right to the city perspectives, the analytical neologism of contested urbanism could be seen as either an oxymoron or not a true novelty. For the authors of this study, however, the originality of the concept lies in the fact that no matter how urbanism processes are labeled, packaged, and implemented, the themes of production of space and the right to do so must converse with each other explicitly because both are embedded in a potential transformative process of social change. The neologism furthermore attempts to combine an urban studies perspective with an architectural one,