By KK Yadav, (Former chief town planner, Haryana, & professor emeritus, Amity University)
Making a provision for green spaces in a city’s construction plan and ensuring their construction and management determines the whole social and physical wellbeing of its citizens.
Being part of the National Capital Region, Gurugram is growing as an industrial and industrial hub. Pressure of accelerating inhabitants on its infrastructure amenities and services and products is telling upon its sustainability. Parks, open spaces, playgrounds, stadiums, city forests and green belts determine the whole health of a city (which is why they're known as lungs of a city).
However, the condition of neighbourhood and neighborhood parks in quite a lot of places developed by means of Huda and personal builders is pathetic.
Most neighbourhood parks were transformed into playgrounds. As a result, green grass and flowering plants, which want nurturing, get burnt up from parks. It’s now not unusual to seek out dog poop in those parks as residents stroll their pets here. Some neighbourhood parks have additionally been clandestinely transformed into golf equipment, colleges or parking so much by means of non-public builders the use of their affect in the executive. Green strips alongside sector dividing roads were transformed into parking so much as smartly by means of some residents. In another places, those green belts are getting used as garbage dumping websites.
The Gurugram-Manesar Urban Complex (GMUC) 2031 provides for green belts, open spaces and different waterbodies. About 1,290 acres of land supposed for green spaces, essentially aligned alongside Northern Peripheral Road (Dwarka Expressway) and the national freeway used to be notified in 2013 for acquisition by means of Huda in the newly growing sectors (76-115). But that acquisition has been reportedly allowed to lapse due to lack of cash with the city construction authority. This has come as a super setback to efforts to make the city greener. Except neighbourhood parks and green strips in developed Huda sectors, maximum green spaces proposed in the construction plan aren't subsidized by means of a land acquisition plan. No feasibility learn about and physical survey have been carried out both. The old city of Gurgaon, meanwhile, is almost devoid of any green spaces, stadium or playgrounds.
The condition of green belts alongside the expressway is distressing. The mandated green belt alongside the expressway from the Delhi border to Rajiv Chowk has been transformed right into a concrete jungle in the title of road infrastructure.
Besides, petrol and fuel pumps, boosting stations and parking for a private college have replaced green belts on all sides of the expressway. Further, from Rajiv Chowk to the interchange at Kundli-Manesar-Palwal (KMP) Expressway near Manesar, there are no indicators of bushes. What stays of the green belt alongside the expressway is beset with issues like encroachment, poor repairs, felling of bushes, sewage spill, and many others.
Financial crunch is cited as the reason in the back of those issues. But the truth is that poor governance and mismanagement remain the foremost reasons in the back of the horrible state of green spaces in Gurugram.
In the pastime of the whole health of the city, protecting and maintaining existing green spaces, and different environmental benefits, the newly created Gurugram Metropolitan Development Authority (GMDA) needs to make preparations for obtaining and growing green spaces provided for in GMUC 2031. For this, the local people, NGOs, environmentalists and RTI activists must be involved for a wholehearted, integrated and coordinated manner. Urban planners too will have to undertake a regional manner in harnessing environmental benefits.
Making a provision for green spaces in a city’s construction plan and ensuring their construction and management determines the whole social and physical wellbeing of its citizens.
Being part of the National Capital Region, Gurugram is growing as an industrial and industrial hub. Pressure of accelerating inhabitants on its infrastructure amenities and services and products is telling upon its sustainability. Parks, open spaces, playgrounds, stadiums, city forests and green belts determine the whole health of a city (which is why they're known as lungs of a city).
However, the condition of neighbourhood and neighborhood parks in quite a lot of places developed by means of Huda and personal builders is pathetic.
Most neighbourhood parks were transformed into playgrounds. As a result, green grass and flowering plants, which want nurturing, get burnt up from parks. It’s now not unusual to seek out dog poop in those parks as residents stroll their pets here. Some neighbourhood parks have additionally been clandestinely transformed into golf equipment, colleges or parking so much by means of non-public builders the use of their affect in the executive. Green strips alongside sector dividing roads were transformed into parking so much as smartly by means of some residents. In another places, those green belts are getting used as garbage dumping websites.
The Gurugram-Manesar Urban Complex (GMUC) 2031 provides for green belts, open spaces and different waterbodies. About 1,290 acres of land supposed for green spaces, essentially aligned alongside Northern Peripheral Road (Dwarka Expressway) and the national freeway used to be notified in 2013 for acquisition by means of Huda in the newly growing sectors (76-115). But that acquisition has been reportedly allowed to lapse due to lack of cash with the city construction authority. This has come as a super setback to efforts to make the city greener. Except neighbourhood parks and green strips in developed Huda sectors, maximum green spaces proposed in the construction plan aren't subsidized by means of a land acquisition plan. No feasibility learn about and physical survey have been carried out both. The old city of Gurgaon, meanwhile, is almost devoid of any green spaces, stadium or playgrounds.
The condition of green belts alongside the expressway is distressing. The mandated green belt alongside the expressway from the Delhi border to Rajiv Chowk has been transformed right into a concrete jungle in the title of road infrastructure.
Besides, petrol and fuel pumps, boosting stations and parking for a private college have replaced green belts on all sides of the expressway. Further, from Rajiv Chowk to the interchange at Kundli-Manesar-Palwal (KMP) Expressway near Manesar, there are no indicators of bushes. What stays of the green belt alongside the expressway is beset with issues like encroachment, poor repairs, felling of bushes, sewage spill, and many others.
Financial crunch is cited as the reason in the back of those issues. But the truth is that poor governance and mismanagement remain the foremost reasons in the back of the horrible state of green spaces in Gurugram.
In the pastime of the whole health of the city, protecting and maintaining existing green spaces, and different environmental benefits, the newly created Gurugram Metropolitan Development Authority (GMDA) needs to make preparations for obtaining and growing green spaces provided for in GMUC 2031. For this, the local people, NGOs, environmentalists and RTI activists must be involved for a wholehearted, integrated and coordinated manner. Urban planners too will have to undertake a regional manner in harnessing environmental benefits.
GMDA must acquire land for green spaces
![GMDA must acquire land for green spaces]()
Reviewed by Kailash
on
June 08, 2018
Rating:
