Then and now: Once upon a time this used to be my playground

It is five in the evening. The homework is all complete and 12-year-old Umang Chitle and his friends take the lift to the ground floor and look for a free parking lot to start their daily game of lagori.

The game is in full swing when a car zooms in and parks in its designated parking space — Umang and his friends' playground for this evening.

With the average middle-class family owning two or more cars, the shortage of parking space has never been so acute. And the first to feel the brunt are children, who are fast losing their playgrounds and every available inch in the building compound.

With 13.5 lakh vehicles plying on city roads daily and 200 new cars entering Mumbai roads everyday, the city is hard pressed for parking space.

With every new building project that comes up, urban planners and builders involved have to think about accommodating the growing number of cars. What is being sacrificed in the process are children's play spaces.

First to go were the streets and lanes of yesteryears where earlier generations used to play with great abandon. Soon the pavements vanished too once parking was permitted on them. Now some of the new apartment blocks are foregoing play spaces to accommodate parking spaces for cars.

“I feel sad that Umang has no open ground to play in. He and his friends make do with whatever free space there is in the building,” says his father Pranab Chitle.

Born and brought up in Malad, Chitle claims this wasn't the case when he was growing up. As the fastest growing western suburb in the city, Malad sported a very different landscape five years back with mangroves, coconut trees and open spaces.

Today, major roads, streets and even narrow by-lanes have been converted into parking lots.

Old city area like Matunga, Dadar, Mahim, Napeasea Road, Walkeshwar that sport traditional 4-5 storey buildings too are fast filing up all available space with cars.

“Most people here park their cars on the roads, making the roads inaccessible for children to play in. Of course, compared to the suburbs, Matunga has more gardens and parks. Nevertheless, when you put into perspective the situation during the days my children grew up, now, the number of cars have increased and roads are unsafe,” says Rashmi Kidwai, a housewife from Matunga.

The shortage of open spaces in Mumbai's skyline has never been so obvious. The Bombay High Court in its judgment on developing mill lands mentions the need to set aside open spaces.

According to a study conducted in 1970, Mumbai has 0.03 acres (or less) of open space per 1,000 people. This is approximately 6 per cent of the required space, which is 0.5 acres per 1,000 people.

Experts believe that the ratio is 0.015 acres per 1,000 persons today — approximately 540 times lesser than the requisite minimum.

“Mumbai has the worst open space-people ratio. We rank the lowest in the country,” says Prasad Shetty of Collective Research Initiatives Trust (CRIT), an organisation, which researches urban spaces.

“It isn’t just lack of open spaces but the lack of safe spaces that’s worrisome. Pavements, public parks and streets, which were safe earlier, are now taken over by hawkers, encroachers making them unsafe for children.”

“In the mad rush to build homes, most builders overlook the basic need for open spaces. While bigger builders catering to the upper class offer playgrounds, club houses and other recreational facilities to their residents, those building homes for lower and middle income groups often miss the vital open space required for children,” says Shetty.

With no laws to govern open space requirements in building societies, builders prefer using all available land for construction.

“There is no hard and fast rule regarding open spaces in building societies. It depends on the size of the plot, height of the building and size of the project. Smaller plots however, don't necessarily need to set aside an open space or playground,” says VD Ingwale, executive engineer, building proposal department (Eastern suburbs), BMC.

The entire system — from housing to schooling — seems to revolve around concrete and glass. Even schools don't have playgrounds anymore. Small wonder then that kids watch more of adult television.

Umang and his friends, meanwhile lose out on their patch of open sky and greens — they haven't played in a real playground, ever.

“It must be fun, but we don't have any playground in the building or in the neighbourhood,” says Umang as he runs off with his friends to play hide-n-seek among the parked cars.