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About the talk:
This talk examines how geospatial technologies are transforming the governance of urban land and slums in Mumbai. By tracing how slums are mapped across scales and time in 2D, 3D, from above, around, inside, and volumetrically, it shows how these technologies produce new forms of legibility, calculability, and selective hypervisibility of dwellers and their land. Her research analyses the emergence of what she calls the Satellite Slum Clearance process, an approach developed by the state to accelerate slum clearance, reduce rehabilitation costs, and efficiently free land for redevelopment. The research explores how remote sensing and algorithmic processes function as a political project that black-boxes planning decisions and selectively ignores known technical limitations. Situating this within broader debates on the political economy of land, her research highlights how geospatial technologies not only represent land but actively reshape its value, transforming rights and urban futures in ways that demand critical scrutiny.

Speaker:

Sanjana Krishnan is a land and technology researcher, a computational social scientist, and a development sector consultant. Her PhD looks at how the design and use of digital technologies produce a new approach to the governance of land and housing in Mumbai. More broadly, she is interested in studying the political economy of land, examining how data, technology, and algorithms work, and using them in innovative ways. She completed her PhD at the University of Kentucky in December 2025 and has received internationally competitive research grants from the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research Foundation and the Social Science Research Council to support her research.

This is the one hundred and ninty one (192) in a series of Urban Workshops planned by the Centre de Sciences Humaines (CSH), New Delhi, and Centre for Policy Research (CPR). These workshops seek to provoke public discussion on the city’s development issues and address all its facets including its administration, culture, economy, society, and politics. For further information, please contact: Rama Devi at ramadevi2487@gmail.com, Champaka Rajagopal at champaka@cprindia.org or Partha Mukhopadhyay at partha@cprindia.org.