Blue Infrastructures

Jenia Mukherjee is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur. Her research interests include urban sustainability, environmental history, political ecology and development studies. In 2013, she was awarded the World Social Science Fellowship on ‘Sustainable Urbanization’ by the International Social Science Council. She has published papers and chapters in peer-reviewed journals and edited volumes, and has engaged in international projects on urban environmental issues. Her most recent book (edited) is Sustainable Urbanization in India: Issues and Challenges (Springer, 2018). She was awarded the prestigious Carson Writing Fellowship (2018-19) by the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society, Munich, Germany for completing this book project: Blue Infrastructures: Natural History, Political Ecology and Urban Development in Kolkata. 

Introduction.- The natural evolution of the urban.- Tamed Interventions.- Untamed practices.- Disrupted networks.- Transformed infrastructures.- Polemics of planning, development and environment.- Urban environmentalisms.- Beyond declensionism, towards the useful narrative.

“I would recommend this as an essential read for the scholars, activists, practitioners and policymakers working on urban environmental issues. Blue Infrastructures is a good introduction and starting point for the socio-political contextualisation of the meta-narrative of the Anthropocene at the urban level.” (Shilpa Dahake, Urbanisation, June 26, 2022)