Urban commons reconfigured: Reclassification and infrastructural transformation in Old Pokhara, Nepal

Urban commons are increasingly recognised as heritage, yet their conservation often remains rhetorical as they continue to be degraded, relocated, or transformed in rapidly changing urban contexts. This article examines how and why shared resources that remain widely valued as heritage become increasingly vulnerable within processes of infrastructure-led urban transformation in Old Pokhara, Nepal. Historic neighbourhoods in Old Pokhara contain a constellation of shared resources, including chautari (resting platforms), dhara (public taps), mandir (temples), and pauwa (travellers' shelters), which have long supported mobility, ritual life, social interaction, and neighbourhood cohesion. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, the article shows that commons decline cannot be explained simply through neglect, lack of awareness, or displacement. Rather, infrastructure-led development, changing use value, uneven legitimacy regimes, fragmented collective action, weakening intergenerational transmission, and market pressures interact to reshape the status of commons in practice, even as they remain culturally valued in discourse. These transformations reflect processes of reclassification through which shared resources are progressively rendered expendable, secondary, or obstructive within changing development priorities. The article contributes to urban commons scholarship by showing that commons transformation is not confined to overt enclosure or privatisation but frequently unfolds through incremental processes of reclassification. By foregrounding reclassification as a mechanism linking infrastructural expansion, governance, and everyday urban change, it offers an empirically grounded account of how commons are redefined, sustained, or lost in rapidly transforming cities.