• Lisa Björkman
• Nick R. Smith

A growing body of research on urban India and China shows that the concepts drawn from the histories of urbanization in the West are not adequate for understanding the new forms of power, networks, capital, and infrastructure that constitute the rapidly changing urban ecologies of China and India. The authors of two recent books will discuss the meanings and significance of the “urban” in two of the largest and most populous urban centers in the world: Greater Mumbai and the Municipality of Chongqing. Drawing from their research on transformational processes that span conventional boundaries of rural-urban, formal-informal, state-society, citizen-subject, the panel addresses questions of governance, migration, infrastructure, and public goods provision. Lisa Björkman is the editor of Bombay Brokers (Duke University Press, 2021). Nick R. Smith is the author of The End of the Village: Planning the Urbanization of Rural China (University of Minnesota Press, 2021).