Negotiated planning: suburbanization and planning agency in colonial Salsette, Bombay

This article reconsiders the history of colonial suburbanization through the making of Bombay’s suburbs in Salsette Island, focusing on planning as a negotiated process. Histories of colonial urbanism have often emphasized the state, professional expertise, and the diffusion of European planning ideas, while colonial suburbs have frequently been understood as extensions of the metropolitan city. Examining Town Planning Schemes and the Bombay Development Department’s scheme in the suburban towns of Bandra, Vile Parle and Khar, this article argues that suburbanization was shaped through encounters between colonial planning frameworks and local institutional, social, and property relations. Municipalities pursued infrastructure and metropolitan integration, while landowners and residents negotiated roads, land redistribution, compensation, and amenities through petitions, objections, and arbitration. In Khar, property markets and middle-class purchasing capacities compelled colonial planners to adapt imported suburban models to local economic conditions. The article conceptualizes these processes as negotiated planning, showing that colonial planning authority was relational rather than unilateral. Salsette therefore reveals the colonial suburb as a significant site where planning ideas were negotiated, contested, and materially transformed, contributing to wider histories of colonial planning, suburbanization, and planning agency in South Asia.