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Paper short abstract

This paper examines how urban residents mobilise grassroots agency when formal participatory mechanisms fail. Drawing on zoning disputes in an Indian city, it shows how communities shifted from invited participation to claimed legal action to contest illegal construction and pursue spatial justice.

Paper long abstract

Urban governance in many cities of the global South is formally structured around participation, planning permissions, and regulatory oversight. Yet, in practice, residents often encounter governance as fragmented, opaque, and unevenly enforced. This paper examines how grassroots agency emerges when “invited spaces” of participation fail to address everyday violations of spatial justice. Drawing on the author’s direct involvement in two urban zoning and building-regulation disputes in an Indian metropolis, the paper reflects on how ordinary residents confronted unauthorised construction enabled by institutional neglect.

In both cases, municipal authorities have violated zonal and planing norms. Despite repeated petitions and engagement within officially sanctioned consultative mechanisms, residents found that administrative processes were ineffective in halting these violations. This impasse prompted a strategic shift from invited participation to “claimed spaces” of action, most notably through collective legal mobilisation. Judicial intervention ultimately halted construction, revealing courts as critical—if uneven—arenas of urban governance.

Using a spatial justice lens, the paper argues that grassroots agency is not merely reactive resistance but an adaptive political practice that navigates multiple scales of governance. The analysis highlights how legality, informality, and power intersect in the everyday production of urban space, and how residents transform institutional failure into collective action. Methodologically, the paper offers a reflexive, practice-based account that bridges activism and scholarship, foregrounding positionality and ethical responsibility.

By situating community legal struggles within debates on urban informality and alternative visions of progress, the paper challenges technocratic notions of participation and re-centres agency as relational, contested, and spatially ground