The territories cities and landscapes of South Asia are under incredible transformation due to manmade and natural conditions. As countries in the region are undergoing a process of decentralization and devolving responsibilities, spatial planning and urbanism are greatly affected particularly in terms of infrastructure provision, environmentally-responsive growth, and transformation, synchronization between government agencies, community participation, and institutional strengthening. Cities and their hinterlands are simultaneously reaping the benefits and pitfalls of the region’s near-universal endorsement of the neo-liberal urban development paradigm. Urban and rural cultures alike are overlaid with new spatial logics of global tendencies. There is enormous pressure from deregulated real estate speculation threatens the heritage of ancient urban fabrics as well as of neighboring fragile landscape ecologies, which is compounded by the fact that cash-strapped governments are retreating from the public realm.

South Asian cities and landscapes have been traveled to, mapped, chronicled, and described. The biographies of the territories remain dependent upon who was mapping and narrating and for what purpose. The cases investigated here – the southwest (Galle-Matara) coast of Sri Lanka, Mumbai (pop. 13 million), the economic engine of India, and Khulna (pop. 2.3 million), the third-largest city in Bangladesh, were significantly transformed into sites of geopolitical and economic importance during the colonial era – first by the Portuguese and British.