Abstract
Urbanisation in the cities of the Global South is steered through high-level urban development plans and sector-specific policies, often premised on macro-scale processes and economic restructuring. Given the centralized and standardized approach, these plans and policies remain disconnected from the city-making processes that unfold incrementally at the sub-city or the neighbourhood scale through the everyday decisions of multiple stakeholders. The neighbourhood scale is significant as it allows for negotiation and participation, thus providing opportunities to exercise social, spatial, and economic agency. Yet this scale is often overlooked—at times completely missed—in macro plans and policies. Important questions thus remain on how neighbourhoods function and transition and how these transitions can be captured meaningfully to steer city making. The paper tries to answer some of these questions by examining everyday transformations across two contrasting neighbourhoods in Bengaluru, India—Jayanagar, a mature, planned layout in the inner city, and Bommanahalli, a rapidly urbanising peripheral locality shaped by industrial expansion. Observable in the transitions in both neighbourhoods are decentralised incremental responses—to rising housing demand, city scale infrastructure expansion, and increasing land values—as against large-scale redevelopment. In tracing informal densification in these neighbourhoods, the paper evidences its frequent departure from statutory regulations and its consequences for parking, mobility, and basic services. Yet these transformations reveal significant individual and collective agency in the everyday negotiation of city-making. The paper argues that these incremental transformations, if steered through a ground-up framework can positively address critical policy questions related to the nature of housing demand. While highlighting the importance of neighbourhood-scale analysis in understanding urban transformation, the paper calls for a context-sensitive statutory local area planning framework that recognises and steers socio-spatial transitions at this scale.
Recommended Citation (provided in OSCOLA format)
Anjali Karol Mohan and Justin Andrews Jeganathan,
"Framing Ground-Up Urban Transformation: The Need for Neighbourhood-Scale Statutory Planning Frameworks"
(2026)
10(1)
Journal of Law and Public Policy
Available at:
https://repository.nls.ac.in/jlpp/vol10/iss1/3