Watch the full video (above) of the conversation with Olivier Mongin, co-organised by Centre de Sciences Humaines (CSH), Institut Français India (IFI) and CPR. The author was in conversation with Senior Visiting Fellow, Marie-Hélène Zérah and related his work to the Indian urban environment and introduced perspectives from her involvement with the research collective on subaltern urbanisation.

The starting point was Olivier Mongin’s book City of Flows (‘La Ville des flux’, published in 2013), which reflects on the trajectory of cities in an era of globalisation. For him, there is an ongoing ‘de-territorialisation’ process in the cities, which avoids regulation, because of their integration into a vast global movement materialised by flows. He argues in favour of the urgent need to rethink urban values, which have taken various forms and semantics through history, and which are vital to envision a more integrative future for cities.

Olivier Mongin, is an essayist and publisher, with a multidisciplinary background in history, anthropology, and literature and was the editor of the journal Esprit from 1988 to 2012.

The question and answer session that followed can be accessed here.