Film City Urbanism in India is about the reciprocal relationship between film and the city as two institutions that constitute each other while fashioning the socio-political currents of the region. It interrogates imperial, postcolonial, socio-cultural, and economic imprints as captured, introduced, and left behind by the politics of cinema. Film City Urbanism in India is located at the intersection of film history and urban history, setting up a dialogue between them. While telling the story of film in Hyderabad, the book also tells the story of makings and re-makings of the city. The term ‘film city urbanism’ is used in two ways in the book. The first, to discuss the role of the film industry, its labour, infrastructure, capital, and audience in the making of the city. The second, to discuss the phenomenon of ‘Film City,’ enclaves dedicated to film production. For clarity, the book uses the full name of the particular Film City such as Ramoji Film City and M.G.R. Film City to refer to the specific enclave under discussion and uses the term ‘film city scheme’ while referring to the general urbanization pattern through these enclaves.

South Asian historiography is dominated by the study of British India. The histories of colonial India stand in for cultural histories of modernity. Historians preoccupied with colonialism and nationalism have often relegated to footnotes other geographies (such as princely states) that are not conducive to telling the story of the nation.