Planning the Millennium City: The politics of place-making in Gurgaon, India

Since India’s economic liberalization, rising costs in urban centers have pushed growth to the peripheries of cities. The territory on which new towns emerge often bears a long history of village life and land tenure, even as the political-economy of real estate asserts alternative identities on such places. This paper explores the phenomenon of place-making, using the case of Gurgaon, Delhi’s burgeoning satellite. Gurgaon’s growth has taken place largely in the absence of municipal city planning. Its boosters have branded it the “millennium city.” Gurgaon is the sum of hundreds of private land deals, with a pixelated built environment of affluent gated enclaves, villages, and pockets of underdevelopment. Many former farmers have become landlords, enriched and active in the real estate game, while others have been less fortunate, yet little scholarship has focused on the interactions between residents of different communities, and the process of social and cultural capital formation that under girds place-making and attempts to resolve planning issues. What possibilities exist in the post-liberalization Indian city for residents to forge a coherent sense of place or plan within the piecemeal? Drawing on interviews with residents, urban villagers, domestic staff, planners and developers, the paper argues that place-making in Gurgaon constitutes a form of planning in its own right, as actors at various levels of agency attempt to solidify claims of residency and take up many of the responsibilities of planning.