Critics of Global South urban- and suburbanization have argued that Asian cities, driven by real estate development and the homogenizing effects of “global city” planning, lack a coherent sense of place or avenues for the art of placemaking. The dissertation unsettles these assumptions, exploring the nature of placemaking and community development for the purportedly unplanned, real estate driven city of Gurgaon or Gurugram, on the outskirts of Delhi, India, also known as the Millennium City. The dissertation follows Gurgaon’s history and rise since India’s economic liberalization in the 1990s. Despite its wealth and connections to global circuits of capital, the city has not produced a clear set of winners and losers in the battle for control of its central place-narrative or quality of life. Even Gurgaon’s most affluent enclaves struggle with the provision of basic infrastructure and services, severe pollution, and fragmented governance, alongside extreme inequality and poor living conditions for migrant workers in adjacent urban villages. This dissertation frames Gurgaon as a starter city, built by private corporations, but also newcomers, including laborers from rural villages, affluent households returning home to India after years abroad, and the indigenous Haryanvi farmers of Gurgaon District, who find themselves in a new place, without having moved at all. The dissertation delves into the social construction of place in the Indian city, its loss and recuperation, and the ways in which practices of placemaking and recovery present alternative approaches to planning under the highly privatized “Gurgaon Model.” The dissertation contributes to theoretical debates about how the decentralization of planning practice in India and the integration of housing, land use and governance frameworks can promote social coherence and community development, as well as how a sustained and grounded analysis of place and place attachment in cities of the Global South can better inform planning theory and practice in the years to come.