Shashikant Nishant Sharma
Head of Research, Track2Training, New Delhi, India
Email ID: research@track2training.com
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8031-8569

Abstract

Urban regeneration is frequently assessed through visible outputs, including replacement housing, upgraded roads and newly installed infrastructure. Such measures provide an incomplete account of whether interventions improve everyday life. This article develops a conceptual framework for inclusive urban regeneration in India by connecting settlement assessment, housing affordability, livelihood continuity, climate-responsive design, public transport accessibility and environmental service management. It draws on selected research concerning informal settlement typologies, redevelopment, vernacular architecture, thermal comfort, passenger satisfaction, pedestrian access, green buildings and waste management. The article is a narrative synthesis and planning perspective, rather than a systematic review or empirical evaluation. Its central proposition is that the neighbourhood should be treated as a connected environment in which changes to one component can redistribute benefits and burdens across households. The proposed framework organises assessment around six domains: residential security, economic continuity, everyday accessibility, environmental comfort, service reliability and participatory governance. It links these domains to diagnosis, comparison of alternatives, implementation and post-occupancy evaluation. Particular attention is given to renters, home-based workers, people with mobility constraints and residents whose needs can be concealed by aggregate indicators. The framework offers a practical foundation for municipal planning, interdisciplinary teaching and future research, while requiring local adaptation and empirical validation before wider application.

Keywords: Inclusive urban regeneration; neighbourhood well-being; informal settlements; housing affordability; livelihood continuity; sustainable mobility; climate-responsive design; participatory planning.

1. Introduction: What Should Urban Regeneration Achieve?

Urban regeneration should improve the conditions through which people inhabit and use the city. A sound dwelling matters, but so do its running costs, its relationship to employment and the reliability of nearby services. A new street matters, but so do the journeys it supports and the people who can cross it comfortably. These connections make regeneration an integrated planning task rather than a collection of construction projects.

The distinction becomes clear when project outputs are compared with household outcomes. Completing a housing block records a physical achievement. Whether residents can afford to remain there, sustain their livelihoods and reach essential destinations requires a different form of inquiry. Both kinds of information are necessary, but one cannot stand in for the other.

Indian neighbourhoods provide varied settings for examining these questions. Older urban areas, informal settlements and expanding peripheral locations have different physical conditions and social arrangements. A planning response appropriate to one setting may be unsuitable elsewhere. Regeneration must therefore combine common public objectives with careful attention to local circumstances.

This article proposes neighbourhood well-being as an organising objective. The term refers here to residents’ ability to live securely, meet recurring costs, maintain economic and social relationships, access opportunities and use a reasonably comfortable environment. It is a planning concept rather than a new statistically validated index.

The discussion develops a framework through selected literature and explicit planning reasoning. It asks how diagnosis can improve intervention choices, how benefits and burdens should be evaluated, and how implementation can remain accountable after construction. The purpose is to offer an approach useful to students, researchers, practitioners and public agencies working across housing, architecture, mobility and environmental management.

2. Approach, Evidence and Scope

The article uses a purposive selection of publications relevant to the relationship between neighbourhood conditions and urban intervention. The starting literature addresses settlement typologies, slum redevelopment, urban renewal, vernacular architecture, heritage comfort and bus rapid transit. Five complementary publications, identified through the Track2Training research collection, address bus-user satisfaction, first- and last-mile connectivity, public open spaces, green buildings and solid waste management.

This selection supports a thematic discussion. It does not establish comprehensive coverage of Indian regeneration research, and no claim is made that competing approaches have been exhaustively compared. The sources include conceptual work, reviews and case studies, which contribute different forms of evidence. Their findings should not be pooled as though they arose from a single research design.

Publisher records, available abstracts and accessible texts informed the source descriptions. Where original text was unavailable, the discussion avoids attributing detailed results. In particular, the heritage-comfort publication is retained as a bibliographic reference without claims about its measurements or experimental outcomes.

The framework presented later is the author’s proposed synthesis. Its domains and implementation stages have not been validated through new fieldwork. Illustrations describe hypothetical planning situations and should not be interpreted as observations from the cited studies.

These distinctions matter because an accessible article can otherwise blur evidence and recommendation. A case study may identify an issue in one city; extending it into a general planning question involves interpretation. Keeping that step visible allows readers to assess the argument and adapt it responsibly. It also identifies the work that future empirical investigation must undertake before the framework can support stronger comparative conclusions.

3. The Neighbourhood as a Connected Unit of Analysis

Administrative boundaries are useful for allocating responsibilities, but everyday activities rarely remain within them. A household may purchase food locally, travel elsewhere for employment and rely on relatives across the city for childcare. Neighbourhood analysis should recognise these connections while retaining a manageable scale for planning and action.

The neighbourhood is therefore understood here as both a physical setting and a network of daily relationships. Buildings, streets and public facilities form its visible structure. Rental arrangements, customer relationships, care networks and informal service practices influence how that structure works. Studying only the visible elements risks overlooking functions that sustain residents’ lives.

Dhote, Silakri and Onkar (2013) offer a relevant foundation by treating intervention choice as dependent on the condition of physical and social infrastructure and community participation. Their framework addresses the need to understand an urban area before deciding on renewal or redevelopment. Read the urban-intervention study.

A connected assessment should begin with residents’ activities rather than a predetermined project boundary. Interviews can identify essential destinations, while mapping can show routes, service points and physical barriers. The resulting picture helps explain which relationships need protection and which deficiencies require improvement.

This approach also recognises that households experience the same location differently. A person working nearby may value proximity above dwelling size, while another may prioritise accessible circulation or reliable water. The purpose of planning is not to force these preferences into a single ideal household. It is to identify shared needs, expose conflicting priorities and compare options through their consequences for different groups.

4. Settlement Typologies as a Basis for Targeted Action

A settlement classification is useful when it supports a specific decision. It can help distinguish areas requiring urgent service attention from those needing structural investigation or wider spatial reorganisation. Its value depends on the quality of its information and the transparency of the judgement that follows.

Singh, Dhote and Soni (2013) develop a typological approach through Jabalpur, considering location, poverty, housing and services. Their matrix-based method is intended to help prioritise intervention. The contribution demonstrates why differences between settlements should be examined before selecting redevelopment measures. Read the settlement-typology study.

For the framework proposed here, classification should distinguish the condition of a building from the suitability of its site and the reliability of its services. A structurally adequate dwelling may occupy a location with serious environmental exposure. Conversely, a well-connected site may contain buildings that require substantial improvement. These situations should not automatically lead to the same response.

Information should also be examined within settlements. A single category may conceal differences between owners and renters, households near a service point and those farther away, or residents at different levels of a sloping site. Disaggregated observation helps prevent the most visible conditions from representing everyone.

Finally, classifications need an update mechanism. Residents should be able to challenge errors, and authorities should revise records when conditions change. A label should not become a permanent description detached from current evidence. The appropriate sequence is to document conditions, explain categories, compare possible actions and revisit the assessment when new information becomes available.

5. Housing Affordability Across the Full Period of Occupation

Affordability is often discussed through the initial price or contribution required to obtain a dwelling. For residents, however, the more immediate challenge may be meeting recurring expenses. Housing payments, utilities, maintenance and transport together shape whether occupation remains manageable over time.

The inclusive redevelopment discussion by Bouddha, Dhote and Sharma (2014) connects intervention approaches with environmental management and residents’ well-being. This provides an entry point for considering housing improvement beyond the physical replacement of shelter. The duplicated author form in the supplied bibliography refers to this same paper. Read the redevelopment review record.

The proposed framework calls for a household cost assessment before selecting an option. This assessment should distinguish regular payments from irregular but foreseeable expenses, including repairs. It should also consider how changes in location affect travel spending and access to income. Comparing housing costs alone can hide burdens transferred to other parts of the household budget.

Consider a hypothetical household offered a dwelling with a lower direct payment but a much longer journey to work. The offer cannot be evaluated adequately without examining the complete change in expenditure and time. The example illustrates a question for appraisal; it does not predict that all relocation will have this effect.

Affordability analysis should include uncertainty. Income can vary, and operating costs may differ from early estimates. Presenting plausible ranges makes the assessment more useful than relying on a single optimistic projection. Residents should understand the obligations attached to occupation before decisions become difficult to reverse.

6. Livelihood Continuity and the Household Economy

Livelihood assessment should examine how work depends on location and space. Some residents travel to a fixed workplace. Others operate from home, sell goods along familiar routes or depend on customers within walking distance. Their requirements cannot be represented solely by the distance to a major employment centre.

Before regeneration, planners should document where income-generating activities occur and what physical arrangements support them. Storage, access for customers, working hours and the ability to combine paid work with care can all matter. These questions are especially relevant when a proposed dwelling differs substantially from the existing living and working environment.

A hypothetical repair worker illustrates the issue. Moving from a street-facing room to an upper-floor unit may change visibility, customer access and the handling of equipment. The planning response could involve a suitable workspace, a different layout or another locally appropriate arrangement. The important step is to identify the requirement before the design is fixed.

Livelihood continuity also concerns the construction period. Temporary moves, restricted access and interruptions to deliveries can affect work even when the completed project offers benefits. An implementation plan should explain the expected disruption, the arrangements for maintaining access and the mechanism for reporting unanticipated difficulties.

These considerations extend the article’s interpretation of inclusive redevelopment; they are proposed appraisal questions rather than findings attributed to a single source. Their usefulness should be tested through household follow-up. Tracking whether work continues, changes or becomes less viable would provide stronger evidence about regeneration outcomes than recording the allocation of replacement premises alone.

7. Residential Security and the Diversity of Occupants

A neighbourhood contains different forms of occupation, and improvement programmes should understand them before defining participation or assistance. Owners, tenants, subtenants and people sharing accommodation may have different interests and different capacities to absorb disruption. Their circumstances should be documented without assuming that one household category represents the entire settlement.

Residential security is used here to mean the practical stability that allows people to organise daily life and plan ahead. It is not a statement that any particular legal entitlement exists. Applicable rights, eligibility and obligations require examination under the relevant local framework by qualified authorities.

Within a planning study, the immediate task is to identify whose situation is visible and whose is missing. A survey based only on property records may overlook occupants who contribute to neighbourhood life but do not appear as owners. Consultation arrangements should therefore allow residents to describe their circumstances and understand how information will be used.

The transition between existing and replacement accommodation deserves particular attention. People need clear information about timing, temporary arrangements, costs and the process for raising concerns. Uncertainty can make it difficult to maintain employment, schooling and care responsibilities even before a physical move occurs.

The framework consequently treats communication and continuity as part of project quality. Records should distinguish proposed arrangements from confirmed commitments, and changes should be communicated in accessible ways. Evaluating these processes alongside the final dwelling helps reveal whether regeneration has supported a workable residential transition for the people it is intended to serve.

8. Vernacular Knowledge as a Resource for Contemporary Design

Vernacular architecture is valuable as evidence of relationships between construction, climate, materials and social use. Its contribution to regeneration depends on understanding those relationships rather than reproducing selected visual features. Documentation should explain how a building works for its occupants and how it has changed over time.

Dhote, Onkar and Das (2012) study tribal settlements and habitats in central India, examining site selection, spatial organisation and climatic responsiveness. Their published discussion proposes adapting underlying sustainable practices to contemporary requirements. This supports an approach in which local knowledge is investigated and evaluated before being incorporated into new design. Read the vernacular-architecture paper.

For a regeneration project, this could involve studying shaded thresholds, shared outdoor spaces or patterns of seasonal use. Interviews with residents and craftspeople can complement measured drawings by explaining repair methods and everyday adjustments. Such accounts should be credited and considered alongside technical investigation.

Adaptation requires judgement. A familiar material or technique may need modification to suit present occupancy, structural requirements or maintenance conditions. Claims of environmental superiority should be supported by appropriate assessment rather than inferred from tradition or local availability alone.

The proposed framework therefore treats vernacular knowledge as a design resource, not an automatic solution. A promising feature should be examined for its function, translated into a feasible proposal and evaluated after use. This sequence creates opportunities for collaboration between communities, designers and researchers while preserving the distinction between cultural appreciation and demonstrated performance.

9. Thermal Comfort and the Quality of Everyday Space

The quality of a dwelling includes how it feels to occupy. Temperature, air movement, daylight, privacy and control over openings influence the experience of everyday space. Regeneration should make these conditions explicit in design discussions and evaluation rather than treating comfort as an incidental benefit of new construction.

Sharma and Dhote (2003) address thermal comfort and heritage buildings in an earlier publication. The original text was not available for direct examination in preparing this article, so no particular measurements or design effects are attributed to it. Its inclusion identifies a relevant line of inquiry linking existing building knowledge and environmental performance.

The proposed assessment should combine measurements with occupant accounts. Instruments can record selected environmental conditions, while interviews can explain when rooms are used, what adjustments people make and which conditions they find difficult. Neither perspective provides a complete account by itself.

Observation should also reflect variation over time. A short visit cannot establish annual performance, and an unoccupied demonstration unit cannot fully represent a household’s use of space. Researchers should describe monitoring periods, occupancy conditions and the limits of their conclusions.

Comfort improvements should be considered together with safety, privacy, accessibility and maintenance. An opening that supports air movement may remain closed if it compromises security or exposes private activities. A useful design therefore responds to the way residents can realistically operate it. Regeneration becomes more accountable when expected comfort benefits are translated into questions that can be checked after occupation.

10. Green Buildings Within the Wider Neighbourhood

Building performance and neighbourhood performance are related but distinct. A dwelling may use resources efficiently while remaining poorly connected to work or services. Conversely, a well-located neighbourhood may contain buildings that need substantial environmental improvement. Regeneration needs to address both scales.

Sharma, Singh, Kumar, Pandey and Dehalwar (2025) discuss green buildings in relation to sustainable neighbourhoods, including resource efficiency and occupant well-being. Their review offers a useful basis for extending environmental design discussions beyond an individual structure. Read the available green-buildings paper.

The framework developed here asks project teams to examine connections at the site boundary. How do people reach the entrance? Where are materials and waste handled? How are shared outdoor spaces maintained? Answering these questions helps align building proposals with the systems on which they depend.

Operating capacity is equally important. Proposed equipment should have a clear maintenance arrangement, understandable controls and realistic provision for repair or replacement. The financial assessment should identify who will pay for those tasks and whether the expected expenditure is manageable.

Environmental appraisal should also distinguish predicted performance from observed performance. Design estimates are useful for comparing options, but they remain expectations until tested under actual use. Post-occupancy review should investigate both resource consumption and residents’ experiences. Publishing the difference between expectation and outcome creates an opportunity to improve later projects and avoids treating the installation of a technology as proof that its intended benefits have been achieved.

11. Public Transport and the Geography of Opportunity

Regeneration changes the relationship between residential locations and urban opportunities. Access to employment, education and services should therefore be assessed before a housing or neighbourhood intervention is selected. The presence of a route nearby is only one part of that assessment.

Jaiswal, Dhote, Krishnan and Jain (2012) examine Ahmedabad’s Janmarg bus rapid transit system within the sustainable transport debate. Their study discusses coordinated infrastructure and bus operations. It is a historical case contribution, and its description should not be used as evidence of present system conditions. Read the Janmarg study record.

The planning argument here is to evaluate complete journeys at relevant times. A service that supports an office commute may be less useful for a worker starting early or a student returning after evening classes. Transfers, waiting and the cost of accompanying a dependent can change the practical value of a route.

Accessibility assessment should therefore begin with a set of destinations and household circumstances that residents recognise. These can be used to compare proposed locations or identify service changes needed alongside redevelopment. The exercise should show assumptions about schedules and travel conditions rather than present estimates as fixed facts.

Transport agencies and housing teams should discuss those requirements before physical decisions are finalised. Where service improvements are necessary for a proposal to function, responsibility and funding should be explicit. Otherwise, a housing project can depend on a transport promise that falls outside its delivery arrangements. Coordinated planning makes those dependencies visible and open to scrutiny.

12. Passenger Experience and the First and Last Mile

Public transport access combines the quality of the service with the conditions of reaching and leaving it. These elements should be investigated together. A passenger may encounter a reliable vehicle but an uncomfortable approach route, or a convenient stop served unpredictably.

Lodhi, Jaiswal and Sharma (2024) examine bus-user satisfaction in Bhopal through a survey of 1,313 respondents and discrete choice modelling. Their findings identify comfort and safety among important concerns, alongside operational attributes. The study illustrates the value of systematic passenger feedback. Read the passenger-satisfaction study.

Yadav, Dehalwar and Sharma (2026) review environmental influences on first- and last-mile mode choice. Their synthesis identifies microclimatic conditions, environmental quality and infrastructure continuity as relevant, while acknowledging contextual and methodological variation. Read the first- and last-mile review.

The proposed application is a combined service and access audit. It should document waiting, boarding and information alongside crossings, route continuity and environmental exposure. Current users should be consulted, but so should people who cannot use the service or have stopped doing so. This helps reveal barriers that onboard surveys alone cannot capture.

Responses should be tied to identifiable responsibilities. A service-regularity problem and a broken crossing may involve different agencies, but residents experience both within one journey. Coordinating corrective action is therefore part of the regeneration task. Follow-up should examine whether the complete journey has become more usable, rather than simply counting separate works completed around a stop.

13. Public Space, Topography and Inclusive Movement

Public open spaces contribute to neighbourhood life when people can reach them, enter them and use them in ways that meet their needs. Their distribution should be considered alongside the routes that connect them to homes and everyday destinations.

Lalramsangi, Garg and Sharma (2025) investigate route choices to public open spaces in Aizawl using space syntax. Their work highlights the relevance of hill-city conditions to pedestrian access and the limitations of treating urban movement as entirely planar. Read the public-open-space study.

For the proposed framework, proximity should be interpreted through usable routes. Steps, gradients and indirect connections can change the effort involved in reaching a destination. A map showing short straight-line distance should not be treated as sufficient evidence of convenient access for everyone.

Assessment should include different users and times of day. People may value seating, shade, visibility or opportunities for social activity differently. Observation can help identify patterns, while consultation can explain why some residents are absent. Neither a single site visit nor an aggregate visitor count can answer every question about inclusion.

Regeneration proposals should connect public-space design with maintenance and management. A space requires arrangements for cleaning, repair and resolving conflicts over use. These responsibilities should be discussed with the people and organisations expected to carry them out. The outcome to examine is continuing usability, including for people whose requirements are easily overlooked in a standard design brief.

14. Environmental Services and the Organisation of Daily Work

Reliable environmental services depend on infrastructure and on the organisation of routine tasks. Collection, cleaning, inspection and repair require people, equipment and coordination. A regeneration programme should therefore study the service process as carefully as it studies the physical asset.

Sharma, Dehalwar and Singh (2024) review emerging techniques in solid waste management, including recycling, composting and waste-to-energy options, together with benefits and challenges. Their chapter provides an overview of approaches rather than evidence that one technology is appropriate everywhere. Read the waste-management chapter.

A local proposal should begin with information about the waste stream and existing collection arrangements. It should then assess space requirements, operating costs, material destinations and the capacity to maintain the chosen process. Household instructions need to correspond with what collection workers and facilities can actually support.

The framework also calls for attention to workers and existing recovery activities. Interviews can reveal where materials are sorted, how income is earned and what difficulties occur during collection. Changes should consider these relationships and specify arrangements for continuity and worker protection.

Similar reasoning applies to drainage and other shared services: documenting an installed component is different from showing that a service works. Evaluation should record failures, response times and user experience over a defined period. Students can contribute through carefully bounded audits, provided they explain sampling limitations and avoid turning a short exercise into an unsupported estimate for an entire city.

15. A Six-Domain Framework for Neighbourhood Well-Being

The preceding discussion can be organised into six connected assessment domains. They are proposed categories for inquiry, not statistically derived dimensions or a validated scoring system. Their purpose is to help teams retain a broad view while assigning clear questions to investigation.

Residential security concerns continuity of occupation, clarity of transition arrangements and the stability needed to organise everyday life. Economic continuity concerns recurring household costs and the ability to maintain income-generating activities. Everyday accessibility concerns complete journeys to work, education, services and social destinations.

Environmental comfort concerns how people experience indoor and outdoor conditions, including opportunities to adjust or avoid difficult exposure. Service reliability concerns whether shared systems function consistently and how failures are addressed. Participatory governance concerns the ability of affected people to understand, influence and question decisions.

The domains overlap deliberately. A longer commute can affect affordability, while an overheated route can affect accessibility. The assessment should record such connections rather than force every issue into one isolated category. This also discourages departmental reporting from fragmenting the household experience.

Each domain should include a baseline, an intended change, a responsible organisation and a follow-up question. Some information will be quantitative, while other information will require explanation or direct observation. A single composite score is not recommended at this initial stage because weights and trade-offs have not been validated. A transparent account of conditions is more useful than numerical precision that hides unresolved choices.

16. From Diagnosis to Implementation and Evaluation

Applying the framework begins with a shared baseline. Technical records should be compared with field observations and residents’ accounts, and discrepancies should be investigated. The baseline should state what is known, what remains uncertain and which groups may be underrepresented.

Alternative interventions can then be assessed against the same questions. Options might include service improvement, building repair, selective reconstruction or more substantial redevelopment, depending on local conditions. Each should explain expected benefits, household burdens, disruption and maintenance requirements. Comparisons should identify dependencies, including transport services or temporary accommodation that another organisation must provide.

Participation should occur while choices remain open. The project team should explain how comments influenced the proposal and why some suggestions were not adopted. Accessible summaries, smaller discussions and non-digital participation routes can complement formal meetings. Attendance should not be interpreted automatically as agreement.

Implementation should include a clear transition plan and a mechanism for addressing unexpected problems. Responsibilities need to extend beyond the construction contractor to the organisations that will operate services and maintain shared spaces. Communication should distinguish confirmed arrangements from matters still under negotiation.

Evaluation should revisit the baseline after occupation and at appropriate later intervals. It should investigate both intended benefits and unanticipated burdens. Where outcomes differ from expectations, the programme should identify corrective actions and retain the evidence for future projects. This makes regeneration a process of learning and adjustment rather than a single event marked by physical completion.

17. Indicators, Digital Evidence and Responsible Interpretation

Indicators should be selected because they answer an important question and can be collected credibly. Examples include reported difficulty meeting recurring costs, continuity of work, journey conditions, observed service interruptions and residents’ understanding of project arrangements. These examples require local definition before use.

Every indicator should specify its unit, collection method, period and limitations. A reported experience and a measured condition are different forms of evidence; both may be valuable, but their distinction should remain visible. Results should be examined across relevant household groups where the data support meaningful comparison.

Digital tools can assist mapping, record management and follow-up. They should make evidence easier to inspect, not conceal assumptions behind a dashboard. Missing information should be displayed as missing rather than interpreted as an absence of need. Residents should be able to correct inaccurate records through an accessible process.

Privacy is part of responsible evidence management. Public maps should avoid exposing personal circumstances unnecessarily, and survey participants should understand the purpose of collection. Access to sensitive records should be limited to the task for which they are needed.

Interpretation requires restraint. An improvement observed after a project does not by itself prove that the project caused it. Changes in employment, service provision or household composition may also matter. Researchers should distinguish descriptive monitoring from causal evaluation and select methods accordingly. Honest reporting of uncertainty strengthens the practical value of evidence because it shows decision-makers where further investigation is necessary.

18. Research Priorities and Educational Applications

The framework creates several opportunities for future research. Longitudinal household studies could examine how affordability, work and accessibility change through regeneration. Comparative studies could investigate how different intervention types perform under similar starting conditions. Such work would need careful attention to selection effects and the reasons particular areas receive particular treatments.

Indicator development is another priority. Researchers should test whether the proposed questions are understandable, whether they capture meaningful differences and whether repeated collection produces dependable information. Domain weights should not be assigned solely because software requires a numerical input. Their justification should involve substantive reasoning and discussion with affected groups.

Architectural and planning education can use the framework through bounded neighbourhood exercises. Students might compare mapped services with observed operation, document complete journeys or examine how a dwelling supports paid work and care. These activities should have clear scope, informed participation and outputs useful to the community.

Interdisciplinary collaboration is particularly appropriate. Building analysis, transport assessment and social inquiry can address the same location while retaining their methodological strengths. A shared question helps connect findings without suggesting that every discipline must use the same tools.

The framework’s limits remain substantial. Its selected literature is not comprehensive, its domains are conceptual and its practical recommendations have not been tested here. Future application should adapt it to local circumstances, document modifications and report unsuccessful as well as successful elements. That evidence would allow refinement and help determine where the approach offers value beyond existing assessment practices.

19. Conclusion

Inclusive urban regeneration requires a wider account of success than physical transformation alone. Housing, services, livelihoods, movement and environmental comfort are connected in residents’ daily lives. A project can improve one condition while creating difficulty elsewhere, making it essential to examine benefits and burdens together.

The selected literature provides complementary perspectives on diagnosis, intervention choice, building knowledge, transport experience and environmental management. Drawing on those perspectives, this article proposes six domains for neighbourhood assessment: residential security, economic continuity, everyday accessibility, environmental comfort, service reliability and participatory governance. They offer a structure for asking questions rather than a ready-made performance score.

The central practical requirement is continuity between assessment and delivery. Baselines should inform alternatives; consultation should influence choices; implementation should protect workable transitions; and evaluation should test whether intended improvements are experienced by residents. Responsibilities and operating resources must be identified alongside design proposals.

For municipalities, researchers and educators, the framework encourages a disciplined approach to connecting technical work with lived experience. Its value will depend on careful local application and transparent reporting of limitations. A neighbourhood becomes more inclusive when residents can remain securely, sustain their activities, reach opportunities and rely on the environment and services around them. Regeneration should be judged by its contribution to those conditions over time.

Declarations

Article type: Narrative synthesis and conceptual planning perspective.

Data and ethics statement: No new participant data were collected for this article. The framework and hypothetical examples are proposed for discussion and future validation. No empirical outcomes are claimed for the framework.

Source limitation: The literature selection is purposive. Descriptions draw on accessible publisher records, abstracts and texts; original-text access limitations are identified in the article. The earlier conference citation for the vernacular study is represented by its verified journal version, and the duplicate slum-redevelopment entry is consolidated in the references.

References

Bouddha, C., Dhote, K. K., & Sharma, A. (2014). Slum redevelopment strategy: A way forward to urban environment management through inclusive approach. Research Journal of Engineering Sciences, 3(7), 28–37. Publisher record.

Dhote, K. K., Onkar, P., & Das, S. (2012). Identifying the sustainable practices from the vernacular architecture of tribes of central India. American Transactions on Engineering & Applied Sciences, 1(3), 237–251. Published full text.

Dhote, K. K., Silakri, R. K., & Onkar, P. (2013). Urban renewal and redevelopment: Identification of appropriate planning intervention for Indian cities. International Research Journal of Social Sciences, 2(7), 42–48. Published full text.

Jaiswal, A., Dhote, K., Krishnan, R., & Jain, D. (2012). Bus rapid transit system: A milestone for sustainable transport: A case study of Janmarg BRTs, Ahmedabad, India. OIDA International Journal of Sustainable Development, 4(11), 45–62. Study record.

Lalramsangi, V., Garg, Y. K., & Sharma, S. N. (2025). Route choices to access public open spaces in hill cities. Environment and Urbanization ASIA, 16(2), 283–299. https://doi.org/10.1177/09754253251388721.

Lodhi, A. S., Jaiswal, A., & Sharma, S. N. (2024). Assessing bus users satisfaction using discrete choice models: A case of Bhopal. Innovative Infrastructure Solutions, 9, Article 437. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41062-024-01652-w.

Sharma, A., & Dhote, K. K. (2003). Thermal comfort and heritage buildings. Institution of Engineers (India), Architectural Engineering, 84, 1–3. [Original full text not examined; bibliographic form retained from the supplied reference.]

Sharma, S. N., Dehalwar, K., & Singh, J. (2024). Emerging techniques of solid waste management for sustainable and safe living environment. In M. Nasr & A. Negm (Eds.), Solid waste management (pp. 29–51). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-60684-7_3.

Sharma, S. N., Singh, S., Kumar, G., Pandey, A. K., & Dehalwar, K. (2025). Role of green buildings in creating sustainable neighbourhoods. IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science, 1519(1), 012018. https://doi.org/10.1088/1755-1315/1519/1/012018.

Singh, P. O., Dhote, K. K., & Soni, N. (2013). Development of typologies of slum settlements: The case of a million plus city of India. WIT Transactions on Ecology and the Environment, 179, 153–164. In The Sustainable City VIII: Urban Regeneration and Sustainability. https://doi.org/10.2495/SC130131.

Yadav, K., Dehalwar, K., & Sharma, S. N. (2026). Exploring the environmental determinants of mode choice in first and last mile connectivity: Evidence from a systematic review. Innovative Infrastructure Solutions, 11, Article 204. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41062-026-02614-0.