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– Photo: H. Vibhu

Rare sight: Parks and green open spaces are becoming rare in Kochi.

However, open spaces and parks are a rarity in the city. Such spaces will give a decongested look to the city. Except for the stretch of parks starting from Rajendra Maidan, developed a long time ago, no new parks have come up in the city. The exception being Durbar Hall ground in the centre of the city, which was converted into a green patch by the district administration and the Kunnara Park at Vyttila, developed by the city Corporation. There other smaller parks in the city are largely neglected. Away from the core city area, only Changampuzha Park in Edappally can be taken note of.

Bangalore, is perhaps a classic case of the kind of unplanned development that has eaten into the beauty of the city, while New Delhi, which got its major developmental boost through the Delhi Development Authority from early 1970s, was provided with a lot of open spaces and parks all around the city as it grew. The city now seems to have fewer infrastructural bottlenecks. The builders in New Delhi followed suit, as they took over the developmental process on a large scale, going beyond the Capital city’s borders. In Kochi, the only planned residential and commercial area is found in Panampilly Nagar, where the Greater Cochin Development Authority (GCDA) provided space for parks, shops and wide access roads. Kadavanthara, close to Panampilly Nagar, which has developed into one of the prime residential locations in Kochi, has few open spaces, but for the ones provided by the occasional temple or church.

Except for the main roads leading to the colonies, all the other roads are generally cramped ones. When people are not ready to leave space for road access, there is perhaps little scope to think of developing parks.

Such spaces were provided for in the layouts drawn up by the GCDA for various places, but these pieces of land in the approved layout were sold to people who had no intention of retaining or developing them as parks. Sources in the GCDA said that sub-divisions of such land were sold to individuals without adhering to the approved layout plan.

With Government giving exemption to people citing their need to build a home, these places, earmarked for a green patch in the earlier master plan, became the site of yet another concrete structure.

Most of the layout plans had a system of open spaces and pedestrian walkways, which were blatantly overlooked in granting approval for constructing commercial or residential buildings.

While the officials in the local bodies say that they go by the structural plan, there are a number of clauses that remain ambiguous because of which many spaces are utilised in a manner that is not in keeping with the plan.

An official of the municipality said that the open spaces in an area that is to be developed is approved according to the extent of land. Either the Central Town Planner or the Regional Town Planner gives these sanctions, depending upon the spread of the area.

Many exemptions were provided by the government in the earlier structural plan, but now the conditions of appeal are more stringent, according to officials in the Town Planning Department.

In most of the cities such as Chennai and Bangalore, land in the approved layout costs more because of the better infrastructure it has while land in an unapproved layout costs less. This concept has hardly gained ground in a city like Kochi, where layouts were not taken very strictly.

Some of the builders, however, have given importance to open spaces while building apartments and villas. While quite a few have not given much thought even to have a good approach road to their apartment complexes, there are some who have allotted a large chunk of area of a land for play areas, walkways, connecting roads and other facilities.

Actually, these have become the selling points of the new projects.

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