Advancing Analytical Tools to Understand Urban Planning: Mapping Controversies around the Mumbai Development Plan 2014-2034

The proposed article suggests that urban studies are in need of new tools to describe and analyze the different “regimes of urbanization” in an increasingly heterogeneous urban world. In order to create dynamic and relational descriptions of contemporary cities, we propose to use innovative mapping and analytical tools, which allow representing the richness and complexity of the controversies that accompany the making of a common urban future. Such tools are urgently needed to understand better the conflicting processes that drive urban development and to improve planning methods and policies. Through the event of the publication of draft Mumbai Development Plan (MDP) 2014-2034 and its temporary withdrawal and revision due to an unprecedented public outcry and strong criticism, we propose to use the methodological tool of mapping controversies in the field of urban planning. This event is highly representative of the tensions and conflicts pervading the development and regulation of contemporary cities in the Global South as well as in the North. Using preliminary findings from this ongoing study this article highlights the need for new descriptive methodology that would describe better the heterogeneous characteristic of the cities. Thereby, it proposes to contribute to the international debates on the transformation of urban conflicts and more broadly on the renewal of critical urban studies.