ABSTRACT
A change in the perspective of urban development in favor of a liberal system of governance and management is clearly discernable in India, as also several other developing countries since the mid-1980s. This high-profi le shift has come at a time when most of the cities in these countries were reportedly experiencing some sort of crisis due to demographic explosion and infrastructural defi ciency. The incapacity of the state and local governments to make adequate investments to alleviate this has been seen as a manifestation of the structural distortions which forced many of these countries to usher in programs of globalization and ‘structural reform’.
