Published Volumes by Tanu Sankalia
Papers by Tanu Sankalia
The journal of Asian studies/The Journal of Asian studies, Jun 21, 2024
Journal of Interdisciplinary Perspectives and Scholarship , 2024
Journal of Interdisciplinary Perspectives and Scholarship , 2024
Streetnotes
G.K. Chesterton's short and surreal parable, "The Angry Street: A Bad Dream," reminds us to not o... more G.K. Chesterton's short and surreal parable, "The Angry Street: A Bad Dream," reminds us to not overlook things that surround us in everyday life, and to show them respect. Wayne Thiebaud's paintings of cityscapes, inspired by San Francisco's steep, building-lined streets, reestablish our links to the built environment with a vitality that sometimes the real-and the camera-lacks, but which drawing and painting bring to that which is represented. Chesterton and Thiebaud underscore how fictions are more evocative than truths. In this essay, accompanied by my own drawings of San Francisco's steep streets, I suggest that fantastical fiction and art, in allegorical forms, can inspire us to reconnect with the material world around us-of things, and even streets-with renewed civility and respect
Traditional Dwellings and Settlements Review, 2020
This essay explores the idea of cultural hybridity in the hill town of Cuetzalan, Mexico. It focu... more This essay explores the idea of cultural hybridity in the hill town of Cuetzalan, Mexico. It focuses on two entities within the town: the tianguis, or informal Sunday market, and the Santuario de Guadalupe, also known as the Iglesia de los Jarritos, or "Church of the Clay Pots." Hybridity, the essay shows, is not a facile outcome of the intermingling of different cultures, but the result of historical political struggle-in this case between the indigenous Nahua Indian population and the mestizos who moved to the Sierra Norte de Puebla during the nineteenth century. I conclude that by embodying socio-political and aesthetic oppositions, in tension with one another, hybridity creates stimulating places and facilitates the survival of marginal cultures.
City: analysis of urban trends, culture, theory, policy, action , 2019
Over the last few decades in Mumbai, incessant urbanization stimulated by flows of property capit... more Over the last few decades in Mumbai, incessant urbanization stimulated by flows of property capital has pushed government to privilege private development over public space. In this neoliberal context, citizens’ groups have pressured government to act in the public interest and led the charge to conserve public spaces in the city. This article examines the relationship between citizenship and city building in Mumbai by presenting two case studies of citizen action: the struggle over Land’s End and the making of the Bandra Bandstand promenade. It critically engages the expansive and divergent literature about the politics of the middle class in urban India and resists the tendency of characterizing this group as merely consumerist and anti-poor. The article argues that the roots of middle class involvement in Mumbai’s urban transformation goes back to the 1970s and beyond and posits that the politics and activism of numerous citizens’ groups builds on historical struggles for environmental and social justice in the city.
Journal of Planning History, Mar 1, 2017
Journal of Urban Design, Jun 25, 2014
Medians or central reservations have received scant attention in the vast literature on the histo... more Medians or central reservations have received scant attention in the vast literature on the history, morphology and design of streets, and are rarely considered as places where people can gather. They are mostly conceived as safety barriers, traffic-calming elements or visual features on multi-way streets. However, by focusing on a case study from Berkeley, California, this paper demonstrates how medians transform into active, informal gathering places despite the presence of prominent prohibitory signage and apparent safety risks. The paper explains how the 'unlawful' activity of sitting on the median, or 'picnicking' in this instance, is selectively condoned by the City of Berkeley to suit its own liberal image, and because of the commercial interests at stake, underscoring the political dimension in the production of public space. The paper thus engages a discussion of the concepts and practices related to street design, urban informality and public space enforcement, for which the 'median picnic' stands as a striking example.
Lynch's theory of the clarity of visual urban form, articulated in his book The Image of the City.
Journal of Urban History, Mar 2013
Journal of Planning History
The Urban Unseen examines interstitial spaces found between Victorian-era (1850-1900) residential... more The Urban Unseen examines interstitial spaces found between Victorian-era (1850-1900) residential buildings in the central part of San Francisco. Void spaces, variously referred to as “recesses,” “notchbacks,” “spacing,” “light-wells,” “side-yards,” or as I call them—“slots, ” were primarily introduced to bring sunlight and air into the inner rooms of the long and narrow Victorians. Numerous spaces were lost in the urban transformations of the twentieth century, as Victorians were destroyed during urban renewal, yet many survive in the city’s historic neighborhoods, adapted from their original use as light-wells, to now function as gardens, side-yards, garages, and entrances. Despite their apparent visibility, use, and distinct aesthetic, slots have inadvertently resided in what Walter Benjamin calls our “optical unconscious”—spaces we see but never register, thus remaining mostly overlooked, undocumented and undiscussed. This research project brings slots into our collective view through rigorous documentation using photographs, figure-ground studies, measured drawings and models. Through art-based processes of lighting and casting the project explores how slots can be reimagined to offer images and objects that can inform architectural imagination in potentially transformative ways.
Over the past forty years, El Sobrante, California, has changed from a small rural center in the ... more Over the past forty years, El Sobrante, California, has changed from a small rural center in the midst of grazing land to a mostly-developed residential suburb. Both San Pablo Dam Road (the main roadway through El Sobrante) and the commercial district stretching along that roadway also have changed. San Pablo Dam Road now serves as a regional arterial as well as El Sobrante's "Main Street." The commercial district has attracted new customers from the growing population, but faces new competition from shopping centers and super-stores located off nearby freeway interchanges.
Book Reviews by Tanu Sankalia
Town Planning Review , 2023
A book review of Amelia Thorpe's "Owning the Street: The Everyday Life of Property."
Traditional Dwellings and Settlements Review, 2018
Traditional Dwellings and Settlements Review, 2018
Journal of Planning History, 2017
Uploads
Published Volumes by Tanu Sankalia
Papers by Tanu Sankalia
Book Reviews by Tanu Sankalia