I am delighted to announce that I have been invited by UN-Habitat and ITU to speak in the Virtual forum on “Digital Transformation of Cities and Communities” on 7 December 2020, 12h00 – 14h00 hours, Geneva Time. The objective of this virtual forum is to investigate the expanding role of digital…Continue reading “News and events”
A blog on gender, citizenship and urban life
Ayona Datta
I am Professor in Urban Geography in University College London. I have cross cutting expertise in postcolonial urbanism, smart cities, urban futures, and gender citizenship. I was awarded the Busk Medal from the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) in 2019 for my contributions to the understanding of smart cities through fieldwork.
New Publication: Apps, Maps and War Rooms
Our Urban Pulse review article (written with Arunima Ghoshal, Anwesha Aditi, Arya Thomas and Yogesh Mishra) for Urban Geography “Apps, maps…
New Publication: Self(ie) Governance
My commentary article for Dialogues in Human Geography “Self(ie)-governance: Technologies of intimate surveillance in India under COVID19” has been published. This…
Survival Infrastructures under COVID19 in India
This is a reposting of a Blog published in Geography Directions. I grew up hearing stories of Calcutta during the…
Films, videos and podcasts
Mumbai’s road to global city status has been marked by the construction of flyovers and roads. Apart from increasing the speed with which the city’s new arrivals travel from its domestic/international airport straight to the business district, these infrastructure projects also enable Mumbai as an aspiring global city to make its marginal spaces and citizens invisible to these new arrivals in the city. City bypassed presents the story of Mumbai’s urban renewal as seen from Byculla, a multicultural inner-city neighbourhood symbolically and physically bypassed by road infrastructure projects along Mumbai’s journey to global city status.
Please click here to watch the film ‘City Bypassed‘
City Bypassed
The fate of India’s small towns
Malegaon, a small town near Nashik, Maharashtra, is driven solely by the power loom industry and is forgotten by the state and private sector since the bomb blasts of 2006. Through the eyes of its residents, local activists and civil society members, City Forgotten tells the story of Malegaon’s fall from the Manchester of India to a town in decline, where its women and minorities continue to aspire for and claim their constitutional rights to education despite the lack of any real prospects for its future generations.
Please click here to watch the film ‘City Forgotten’
City Forgotten
Resilience decoded: Multiple dimensions of vulnerabilities in the smart city
UN ECOSOC, 2018 Integration Segment, 20th Plenary meeting. 1st May 2018, New York.
Please click here to listen to my talk.
United Nations ECOSOC Talk
Royal Geographical Society Podcast
Big data and digital technology are changing cities around the world – but are these new urban futures inclusive, or exclusionary? In this podcast we hear Dr Ayona Datta, Reader in Urban Futures at Kings College London discuss her research on India’s smart cities.
Click here to listen to the Podcast.
#AskTheGeographer: Can digital technology make cities safe and inclusive?
Fast Urbanism: Between speed, time and urban futures
Speed is fundamental to producing the modern city. Drawing upon recent research, the inaugural Professorial lecture examined what fast urbanism looks like from the margins of the Indian city. What happens when contrary to the promise of a fast and seamless urban life that delivers the gift of time, the urban poor are confronted with new struggles with mobility, new exclusions from digital and physical infrastructures, reorganisation of domestic life, as well as the dangers of sexual harassment and assault both online and offline.
Please Click Here to listen to my Inaugural on 21 January, 2020, UCL
