Since the late-1980s, Mumbai’s policy makers have adopted a purportedly ‘win-win’ model of low-income housing by involving private developers. The built form of the city has been shaped by the exclusive focus on financial viability and maximization of floor-space, by abandoning all the prerequisites for a healthful and enriching living environment. This focus of ‘coercive formalization’ is premised on the displacement of squatters from unregulated housing and pushing them into deregulated housing, often in the city’s peripheries. In this presentation we will discuss an alternative: a ‘Local Area Plan’ prepared by activists and community based organisations in 2017 for Malvani – a 282 hectare area in the north-western suburbs of Mumbai with many low-income housing settlements. The settlement upgradation plan was inspired by the Geddesian ‘conservative surgery’ approach, to facilitate infrastructure and service inputs without displacement, and by improving what people have built themselves.