Abstract

What might the urban look like if one began not with land but water? What would the politics of city-making – and the urban canon – become if wetness was not considered a fringe phenomenon but central to how the urban inheres? This talk proposes an amphibious urbanism: a means of thinking about the urban condition by focusing on life (bios) in its surrounds (amphi-). It is centred on Guwahati, a city of 1.2 million in northeast India. Flooding in Guwahati is routine, and disaster has become ordinary. Life – both human and other-than-human – is mired in industrial effluent and unfolds in a milieu that has become toxic. Focusing on one particular wetland in the urban extensions, the talk examines three aspects of an amphibious urbanism: the porosity between conservation and ruination, accumulation and dispossession, commoning and enclosure. By doing so, it expands the ontology of the urban, drawing attention to an array of forces whose potential goes beyond the singularity of the case. The amphibious, it is argued, is crucial to understanding a wider urban condition. The talk is based on a forthcoming book and visual project.