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Institutional Networks of Association for GIS Use: The Case of an Urban Local Body in India

In the past decade, India has witnessed rapid urban transformation leading to a changing urban governance culture in the country. This has prompted a growing push toward informationization of government practices coupled with the government’s ambition of building an information infrastructure. Urban local bodies (ULBs) in particular have become the arena for implementation of planning policies conceptualized by the central government as it strives to manage the urban population and fulfill its information technology ambitions. In this process, there has been a growing use of geographic information systems (GIS) and spatial technologies by Indian ULBs. GIS use by Indian ULBs is highly uneven and variable, however. This unevenness can be explained by using literature on critical GIS and politics of scale. Critical GIS highlights the importance of power relations and institutional structures in an organization’s GIS practices, and politics of scale helps to understand the complexities of network formation and power relations embedded in such networks that facilitate an organization’s GIS use. Through an in-depth case study of Surat Municipal Corporation (SMC), this study demonstrates that active construction of scalar politics and networks of association is key in a ULB’s attempts toward spatial engagement. SMC constructs thematic and territorial networks of association to procure material and discursive resources and uses “scale jumping” as a representational strategy to garner political influence. Such a strategy enables SMC to form alliances with key actors and navigate power structures facilitating their GIS use, reflecting the politicized nature of GIS constructions for urban governance by an Indian ULB.