Mimicry, friction and trans-urban imaginaries: Mumbai taxis/Singapore-style. (June 2016)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Bedi, Tarini
• Other Names: Lin Weiqiang guest-editor.; Yeoh Brenda SA guest-editor.
• Is Part Of: Environment and planning. Volume 48:Number 6(2016)
• Page Start: 1012
• Page End: 1029
• Publication Date: 2016-06
• Subjects: Global cities -- Asia -- mobilities -- labor -- transport; City planning -- Periodicals; Regional planning -- Periodicals; City planning; Regional planning; Periodicals; 333.7
• DOI: 10.1177/0308518X15594803
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0308-518X

Abstract

As Mumbai globalizes, the city's aesthetic, aspirational, and imaginative transformations draw from other commercial centers in Asia. Mumbai's owner-operated and hereditary kaalipeeli (black and yellow) taxi-trade is being modeled along the lines of Singapore's fleet-taxi industry. This paper focuses on the political and cultural transformations that accompany this 'Singapore model' as manifest in contemporary Mumbai's taxi-trade. Through a discussion of taxi-modernization in Mumbai it highlights four dimensions of an "Asian mobilities" approach, namely an examination of: the movement of ideas and people; how ideas about moving people around spaces of Asian cities themselves move between different cities; how in turn imaginaries transform the lives of those who labor to move people about; and finally how new kinds of mobilities are constituted through frictions.