Urban policy, particularly the knowledge base and fundamental assumptions behind the same, have rarely been the subject of scholarship in India. As the urban becomes a significant phenomenon in India, however, several basic questions need to be debated as a guide to policy. Urban Parallax fills this lacuna by deconstructing urban policy and asking some critical questions about knowledge of the urban and of policy from multiple perspectives. Economists, sociologists, geographers, planners, and architects provide insight in this timely volume into foundational premises such as the relationship between urbanization and growth, its relationship with inequality, issues of centralization vs decentralization, the issue of differing scales of policy application, and when does policy seem to work and not work. An authoritative book by specialists yet accessible to every informed reader, this book will interest policymakers, urban practitioners, scholars and students of urban studies and anthropology, and every citizen of the Indian city.