ABSTRACT
The introduction addresses the book’s aims to broaden the understanding of urbanisation as a factor in South Asia’s environmental history. Scholarship on individual cities touches on environmental issues when discussing planning processes, public health, inequalities, and migration. However, much of the focus is on the contemporary era without consideration of colonial institutional and intellectual legacies. Similarly, whilst the environmental consequences of the South Asian city’s swallowing up of its surrounding rural hinterland are considered, the more distant displacements of population and environmental damage arising from cities’ ever-growing demands for electrical power and water are often overlooked. Finally, the complex interplay between urbanisation and environmental issues is usually examined from a mega-city and Indo-centric perspective. The volume also examines small towns and expands its case studies to Bhutan, the Maldives, and Sri Lanka.
