Here is an urban quandary. Premium on urban spaces sky rockets by the day, making every inch so pricey that there is no willing room left for greenery and relaxation. On the other hand, properties located in areas with ample lung space have a premium placed over their price!
Capital city expanding on all sides with restive urgency is leaving hardly any space for wholesome development of its human subjects, and the authorities which should provide for the same are unable to catch up. Result is a metropolis crammed and concreted inch by inch, filled with cacophony, and not allowing for any reflective space for urban dwellers torn apart by stress.
Reasons are many
Reasons for the present state of affairs are multi-pronged. Several peripheral areas and villages, before inclusion into GHMC, have been victims of illegal layouts and rampant construction without required permissions. “Though realtors show space for the park initially to sell their plots, several years down the line, and after the price spurt in the locality, greed takes them over, and they try to sell the park space too, which is when residents approach us with a complaint,” shares an official from GHMC.
Though the layout is unauthorised, GHMC nevertheless tries to intervene, first administratively and then legally, in public interest, he says.
Second issue arises when the park space is demarcated, but no park is laid therein, in the authorised layouts. According to the building rules, a minimum of 10 per cent of layout must be earmarked for organised open space and be utilised as greenery, tot lot or soft landscaping. The space should be transferred to GHMC’s possession for development, and no permanent structures will be allowed in the same.
For a park to be developed in the area, the corresponding Colony Welfare Association should enter into a partnership agreement with GHMC for maintenance of the park in the mode of shared expenditure. Only after such agreement is signed, will GHMC start the work to lay a park in the allotted space.
In the agreement, the association should make an undertaking to pay 25 per cent of the amount granted by GHMC for maintenance of the park, to be disbursed once in three months. It is the Association’s duty to employ a watchman, gardener and look after the regular maintenance.
However, in several areas of the city, the spaces earmarked for parks are irregular in shapes, partly encroached, and built with permanent structures such as Ganesh pandals, about which GHMC is doing precious little.
“We can lay a park only after an Association is formed, which agrees to undertake the maintenance. Several associations have contacted us, and we have done the parks for them, but there are also many areas where even associations are not in place,” said an official under the condition of anonymity.
According to GHMC’s recent survey, the city has a total of 3,353 open spaces, in which compound walls have been built for 2,906. Officials inform that the remaining 447 without compound walls are the ones built in unauthorised layouts, without transfer to GHMC. Even for the 2,906 open spaces transferred, GHMC could lay landscape parks only in 873.
In about 331 locations where the welfare associations have not come forward for maintenance, GHMC has planted trees so that they will not be encroached.
About 40 to 50 of the open spaces have been caught in legal wrangles, wherein courts issued stay orders on demolition of the illegally constructed structures in the parks.
