Since 1990 most Indian cities have gone through a remarkable transformation. The economic liberalisation policies then introduced, together with continuing globalisation and the more recent emergence of a service-based economy, fostered a rural-urban migration and a growing building industry catering to the booming population in cities.

The transformation of the urban fabric and architecture has become most prominent in two aspects. The first is the program which the majority of new architecture serves (resulting in dominant architectural typologies), the second is the tectonic of this new architecture (the expression of its materiality and construction technology).

One can assign to the building typologies which emerged since the 1990s a dominant actor (architect, contractor, developer, craftsmen, private initiator, government ) in the building process. A dearth of equipotent actors with diverging agendas working on a synthetic built form has led to an incohesive, fragmented architecture of enclaves, infrastructure and slums between the historic city fabric. The radical shift in the tectonics of these buildings testifies to the disappearance of a tradition of building with local materials and skilled craftsmen. Hence, notwithstanding the incredible diversity of cultural communities, and various modes of production that Indian cities need to cater for, what is emerging in the formal sector is an ever-expanding carpet of limited typologies conceived as undifferentiated enclaves reoccuring at regular intervals and absorbing the older city fabric within a "logic of urbanisation". Urbanisation has been understood by P.V. Aureli not only as a physical phenomenon but also as a “managerial”  tool of governance that facilitates an economic logic of social management of citizens rather than a socio-critical political logic.  The rise of urbanization within today’s globalised world is precisely characterised both by physical and social integration (transport networks and monetary flows) and separation (social divides and gated communities) as simultaneous phenomena reinforcing eachother.

This research project analyses the mechanisms of Pune's political-society (governance) since 1990, and of the various roles actors in the construction process played.