Author ORCID Identifier
Date Available
5-11-2026
Year of Publication
2025
Document Type
Doctoral Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
College
Arts and Sciences
Department/School/Program
Geography
Faculty
Matthew Zook
Faculty
Nick Lally
Abstract
This dissertation examines how geospatial technologies are used to make slums in Mumbai legible, calculable, and hypervisible, and how these practices reshape urban land governance. It situates mapping, remote sensing, and algorithmic systems within their political-economic contexts, showing how technologies intending to see the city often function as instruments of dispossession. The research has three interconnected empirical chapters. The first empirical chapter traces the history of slum mapping in Mumbai, from their absences in early development plans to their selective hypervisibility under the contemporary governance regimes. Using critical cartographic methods, it highlights how novel technologies such as remote sensing, biometric surveys and digital twins have been consultant driven and contributed to both recognition and erasure of slum settlements. It also explores how these legibility activities have produced parallel land records and databases that redefined property relations. The second chapter investigates the adoption of historic satellite imagery for slum demolition, analyzing how state agencies (courts and bureaucrats), citizens, consultants, and private geospatial firms mainstreamed its use. It shows how technology adoption is directly linked to interests in the exchange value of land, as the use of remote sensing enables the state to bypass official slum clearance processes, reduce the number of beneficiaries for rehousing, and settle court disputes. This helps accelerate slum clearance and make redevelopment more profitable. The third chapter interrogates the Algorithmic Slum Identification Project of the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai, which aims to semi-automate the detection of slums from satellite images which was so far happening on a case-to-case basis. By unpacking the black box of its working, it exposes the assumptions, trade-offs, and errors embedded in algorithmic governance, making a case for algorithmic audit. This case is emblematic of certain kinds of technology design and deployment in the global South context driven by presumed shortage of land and money, delivering rehousing more efficiently, plugging leakages, reducing corruption, and formalizing informalities. However, these technologies often work against the interests of marginalized communities. Together, these chapters argue that geospatial technologies do not merely represent urban land but actively reshape its value, rights, and futures. This raises critical ethical questions about accountability and transparency of state procured technologies, and the need to reimagine their use.
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
https://doi.org/10.13023/etd.2025.527
Funding Information
This study was supported by
- the University of Kentucky Department of Geography Research Fellowship, 2025
- the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research (IJURR) studentship grant, 2023
- the Social Science Research Council Data Fluencies Grant, 2023
- the University of Kentucky Department of Geography Barnhart Withington Research Award, 2022.
Recommended Citation
Krishnan, Sanjana, "Making Slums Legible, Visible and Calculable: Geospatial Technologies and the Governance of Urban Land in Mumbai" (2025). Theses and Dissertations--Geography. 113.
https://uknowledge.uky.edu/geography_etds/113
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