about the regions
Three municipalities in the peripheries of metropolitan cities across India, Kenya and Mexico have been selected – Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR), India; Nairobi Metropolitan Region (NMR), Kenya; and Guadalajara Metropolitan region (GMR), Mexico.
The three regions have been chosen as large metropolitan agglomerations that are part of longstanding national e-governance programmes, which have recently intensified towards automating urbanisation in their peripheries. All three regions are marked by histories of colonisation, uneven development and a fragmented ‘digital revolution’ in local governments and thus present important case studies of local governance within ‘digitalising states’ at various levels of articulation. All three regions also have strategic regional plans in place for urbanising its peripheral regions particularly municipalities which hold mainly agricultural and industrial economies. These will produce for the first time, a comparative reading across the global south of rapidly digitalising and urbanising regions — both as exemplary and paradigmatic sites of digitalisation-as-urbanisation.