Mahanirban Calcutta Research group

Introduction

Humanity’s Urban Future
 

Introduction

The protean nature of rapidly evolving South Asian cities like Kolkata is best captured through an inter- disciplinary, multi-sectoral approach, one that considers the city’s architectural evolution and infrastructural developments, the opportunities for work, leisure, and consumption that it engenders, factors determining access to its resources and spaces, and its varied representations, over which there are continuous struggles and contestations. Such an approach is essential not only to understand how cities are made and re-made through time, and the socio-historical circumstances of this material and symbolic production, but also to imagine what the future of a city like Kolkata could look like.

For CIFAR’s ‘Humanity’s Urban Future’ project, the aim of CIFAR Fellow Prof. Ranabir Samaddar has been, over the past two years, to unpack, map, and critically analyse the dynamic and layered processes of urban developments and transformations in Kolkata and beyond. To this effect, a number of programmes were undertaken under the guidance of Prof. Samaddar by Research Assistant Poushali Basak and others at the Calcutta Research Group (CRG), between 2024-25:

• A series of eight public lectures titled ‘City Lights’ – organised between September 2024 and May 2025 across various parts of Kolkata, in an attempt to make research more accessible to the general public.

• An online two-month certificate course on ‘Making and Unmaking of Cities’ – organised in February-March 2025, drawing participation from research scholars, teachers, journalists, professionals, social, legal, media and urban rights activists.

• The publication of two research reports: ‘Dream Deferred: Girl Child Education in post-Covid Kolkata’ by Poushali Basak (published by CRG) and ‘Ecology, Extraction, City: The Making and Unmaking of Kolkata and Its Hinterland’ by Shatabdi Das, Samaresh Guchhait, and Ranabir Samaddar (published by Frontpage).

• A two-day conference on ‘City as the Southern Question’ – organised in November 2024, the proceedings of which have been compiled into an edited book volume titled ‘City as the Southern Question: Alternative Histories of Urbanisation After Gramsci’ edited by Ranabir Samaddar, Enrica Morlicchio, and Sandro Mezzadra, and published by Routledge in December 2025.

In continuation of the aforementioned programmes, the following activities and initiatives have been undertaken as a part of the CIFAR Fellowship in 2025-26:

1. Publication of ‘A Manifesto for Our Urban Future’ – Written by Prof. Ranabir Samaddar, the Manifesto, published in April 2026, puts forward the historic claim that humanity’s urban future shall be determined by the way(s) in which urban future is forged in the Global South. The manifesto was officially released and discussed in a webinar organised by the Calcutta Research Group on the 2 nd of May, 2026.

2. A study on the evolution of urban planning in Kolkata by Madhubanti Talukdar – Employing a combination of archival research and discourse analysis, the study explores the intersections between urban planning, socio-political transformation, and systemic exclusion, with a focus on housing in Calcutta/Kolkata since the mid-1960s (see section on Research Segments for more details).

3. An online certificate course on ‘Urban Futures in South and Southeast Asia’ in collaboration with the Center on Gender and Forced Displacement at the Asian Institute of Technology, Thailand, held from January-March 2026 (see section on Online course for more details).

4. The Tenth Annual Research and Orientation Workshop, November 2025: The Tenth Annual Research and Orientation workshop of the Calcutta Research Group titled ‘Cities Migrants and Insecurities’ was organised from 18th to 22nd November, 2025 in Kolkata, in collaboration with the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR), the European Master in Migration and Intercultural Relations (EMMIR), and the Fund for Global Human Rights (FGHR). Designed as a combination of online and offline segments, the workshop explored cities as spaces of opportunities, possibilities, contentions, vulnerability, and conflict, by examining the intersections between migration and gender, caste, class, and ecological and epidemiological crises. See the Report section for further details on the workshop.

Forthcoming Activities

The following activities have been planned for the year ahead:

1. An edited volume, containing a set of essays and reflections on Kolkata is in the process of being prepared as a part of the CIFAR fellowship activities. Divided into eight chapters, this book shall delve into the many facets and features of the city’s diverse and rapidly transforming urban landscape, including its history of subaltern movements and contestations over urban space, the intersections between social justice and climate change, the relationship between neoliberal urbanism and globalisation and their connection to informal economy and public finance, and the city’s cultural evolution and cosmopolitanism, through a lens of art, literature, migration, and food.

2. At least 4 book discussions on the recently published ‘The City as the Southern Question: Alternative Histories of Urbanisation After Gramsci’ have been lined up for 2026.

3. A number of discussions on Ranabir Samaddar’s ‘Manifesto for the Urban Future’ are currently being planned in multiple cities across the world: Bologna, Athens, London, Bangkok, Seoul, Kolkata, and Mumbai.

Public Lectures

Online Course

Research Segments

Past Programmes 2024

Conferences

Report