2026 Theses Master's

Enclaves and Integration: Planning Rhetoric versus Spatial Reality in Bengaluru's Manyata-Karle Corridor

Ravilla, Ruchitha

North Bengaluru's Manyata-Karle corridor presents a stark contradiction. The Revised Master Plan 2031 of Bengaluru designates it as a polycentric growth node meant to integrate neighborhoods and distribute development benefits, but reality shows something else, where 400 acres of private tech parks operate as autonomous enclaves with world-class infrastructure, surrounded by neighborhoods with failing public systems. Manyata Tech Park has functioned this way since its establishment in 2005; Karle Town Centre follows the same autonomous model. The research asks why the gap persists and how it is produced, as the planning rhetoric mentioned promises integration, whereas the spatial reality produces visible fragmentation.

The research does not evaluate whether this development pattern is beneficial or detrimental, instead, I examine the specific contributing mechanisms such as: regulatory, institutional, spatial and economic, that produce and maintain fragmentation despite explicit planning mandates for integration. Through methods like GIS mapping of infrastructure disparities, policy analysis, ethnographic observation, and interviews with developers, government officials, and residents, I will trace how this gap operates at multiple scales, from SEZ regulations that enable developer autonomy, to fragmented governance where no agency takes responsibility and to the daily operations of the tech parks themselves.

The study aims to examine both enclaves and their edges, analyzing the internal structure of the tech parks to understand how they function? What enables their autonomy? But also it is essential to understand the boundaries; who crosses these edges and under what conditions? What practices emerge where private mega-projects meet heterogeneous neighborhoods? How do residents in the surrounding areas experience infrastructure disparities and navigate fragmentation daily? These answers are important to establish how people actually experience and live in and around these enclaves.

My central argument is that the gap between planning rhetoric and spatial reality isn't an implementation failure, but that it's a product of deliberate mechanisms serving particular interests. Several factors are involved notably, SEZ regulations create spaces where normal planning rules don't apply, fragmented governance ensures no single entity can enforce integration and private infrastructure provision absolves the state of responsibility while creating permanent disparities. These mechanisms strongly reflect how neoliberal urban development restructures the relationship between state, capital, and citizenship in Indian cities.

Fragmentation and integration aren’t opposites but overlapping conditions, visible in the way tech parks operate as autonomous enclaves even as they rely on surrounding informal economies to sustain and in how boundaries that look rigid are negotiated and crossed every day. Adjacent neighborhoods are excluded from infrastructure yet shape the corridor through their presence and labor.

The Manyata-Karle corridor matters beyond Bengaluru. As more Indian cities pursue technology-led growth through private mega-projects under special regulations, understanding how fragmentation persists despite integration mandates becomes necessary. This research reveals whose interests are served by maintaining fragmentation, through what mechanisms those interests override planning mandates, and what integration with justice would actually require beyond physical connectivity.