Digitising the Periphery: Co-Producing a Toolkit for Digital Democracy and Inclusive Urbanisation

Rapid and widespread growth of urban peripheries in the Global South have made them the frontiers of planetary scale urbanisation. In India this has been matched by a 'digital revolution' in urban governance which has presented profound challenges to peripheral municipalities with degraded infrastructures, low digital capacities and high degree of inequalities. This project will investigate how urban peripheries are being transformed by digital infrastructures and technologies and how this is in turn producing new social and material inequalities across digital-territorial margins. Maintaining a close focus on key stakeholders and vulnerable actors, the research will develop digital and participatory methodologies to co-produce a 'toolkit for digital democracy and inclusive urbanisation' with marginal actors living in the peripheries of metropolitan regions. This will address gaps in state digitisation initiatives, produce insights into processes of extended urbanisation in India's digital age and fulfil SDG10, SDG11 and Habitat III-New Urban Agenda.

Professor Ayona Datta, University College London; Professor Abdul Shaban, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, India