The dazzling urban transformation of Indian cities has been subject to an expanding scholarship in urban studies. Llerena Guiu Searle's Landscapes of Accumulation is a welcome addition to the existing scholarship that provides an ethnographic account of the role of the private sector in urban development in India. The book focuses on two groups in the private sector: Indian real estate developers and foreign investors, such as investment banks, mutual funds, and private equity firms. With most of her fieldwork conducted in Gurgaon in the Delhi capital region in the mid-2000s, Searle investigates how Indian developers form partnerships with foreign investors and how they have transformed agricultural and industrial land into high-end residential and commercial properties targeting wealthy global consumers and investors. She argues that large Indian metropolises have been closely integrated in the global circuit of capital, and their land and buildings have been turned into financial instruments for...

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