Appropriating the Public Realm: Overlapping Placemaking Practices in Avenues and Roundabouts of Chandigarh

The paper characterises the persisting interplay between two worlds: the heroic of modern planners; and the prosaic of the poor city practitioners that revolves around their everyday life. It is about conflicting and dual(istic) placemaking practices: first, that are motivated professionally, normatively, politically and are instutionalised (formal); second, the self-initiated of the marginal migrants seeking ‘right to the city’. The engagement between the two varies across places and times. Observations on Chandigarh’s avenues, afterthought roundabouts and migrants’ insertions in them and the accounts of the actors were acquired by the author between June 2006 and February 2007.