Vernacular Urbanism: Making of Good Neighbourhoods in Chennai City, India

Paper Abstract: This paper proposes vernacular urbanism as a theory to understand civic initiatives in making of good neighbourhoods in global south focusing on Chennai, India. Vernacular urbanism depicts the nuances of urban development by concentrating on grassroot initiatives and hence it is a theory from below. Vernacular urbanism brings the local into the central point of discussion in the present time where vernacular forms of urban developments were swept by global capital through various urban processes such as accumulation by dispossession (David Harvey), speculative urbanism (Michael Goldman) and formation of global cities (Saskia Sassen). Vernacular urbanism depicts the quest of urban marginalized groups and their innate desire for creation of good neighbourhood in city. Though, uniqueness is an inherent feature of vernacular urbanism, this paper theorizes the general features of vernacular urbanism such as distinctive historical formation, transformation of settlements, traversing historical injustice and collective mobilization for making of good neighbourhood. The fieldwork for this research was conducted in three settlements (in a scheduled caste settlement, in a scheduled tribe settlement and in a Burma (Myanmar) repatriate settlement) in north Chennai. The fieldwork was conducted from March to November 2023. To sum up vernacular urbanism centers around overcoming historical socio-economic backwardness and making of good neighbourhood through collective civic activism.