[Sarai Newsletter] After the Urban Event, Delhi and Shanghai 2010

[The Sarai Programme]

*The Delhi Urban Platform* invites you to:

*After the Urban Event: Delhi and Shanghai, 2010*

*Speakers*
Ravi Sundaram
Jeffrey Wasserstorm
Rana Dasgupta

*Location:*
Seminar Room
CSDS, 29 Rajpur Road, Delhi (Metro: Civil Lines)
*Date:* Monday, 18th October, 2010
*Time:* 6pm


In a few weeks, two large urban events, the Shanghai Expo and the 
Commonwealth Games in Delhi will come to a close. Spectacular events 
such as these are occasions for local and national elites to mobilise 
vast resources around massive urban transformations, they also make a 
case for global citizenship and recognition. Examples include the Durbar 
of 1911, which proclaimed Delhi as the capital city of the British 
empire, to the recent Expo which sought to announce Shanghai's arrival 
in global capitalism. Urban events concentrate energies around the 
production of spectacular sites, hoping to mobilise city and national 
pride for a brief period of time. In turn, urban events also become 
sites for violent displacements of the poor, surveillance of migrant 
populations, and accumulation of local elites through massive 
infrastructure expansions. Equally events may produce images of chaos, 
greed and urban disasters like the Delhi Games, puncturing the spectacle 
before its commencement. A surplus of memories linger on in the city 
after the event, pride, shame, anger, laughter, pain.

We will meet on 18th October to reflect on the urban event in today's 
Asia, placing the Shanghai and Delhi  events in a long term comparative 
grid.

*Speaker Bios*

Jeffrey Wasserstorm is a Professor of History at the University of 
California, Irvine, and the author of Global Shanghai, 1850-2010 (2009). 
most recently, China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know 
(2010). He is also the editor of the Journal of Asian Studies.

Rana Dasgupta is an author and essayist. His books include the recent 
Solo, and Tokyo Cancelled (2005). Solo won the 2010 Commonwealth Writers 
Prize.

Ravi Sundaram is one of the initiators of Sarai, and a Fellow at CSDS. 
He recently published Pirate Modernity, Delhi's Media Urbanism.

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