To preserve public parks, use them

Public parks offer rare green spaces for urban residents’ recreation. A crucial question related to the ‘publicness’ of these parks is: Who gets to access these spaces, and how? The diminishing green spaces within the city are not just a cause for concern from an ecological perspective but also from the broader questions of access and space utilization. Often, the use of parks by vulnerable groups like people with disabilities and informal workers is not considered an important element when developing parks. This creates unequal access to parks for such groups. Notably, access and park utilisation are often mediated through park rules, infrastructure, and maintenance.

For instance, these rules fix specific usage times: mornings (5 am to 10 am) and evenings (1:30 pm to 8 pm). Typically, the break time between 10 am and 1:30 pm is the hottest part of the day when parks could offer much-needed shade. By implementing such rules, a large number of vulnerable urban residents seeking to rest are excluded from using public parks. This creates access barriers for vulnerable groups like persons with disabilities, waste pickers, and gig workers. For instance, individuals with autism may struggle with crowded spaces during peak hours due to sensory overload. Therefore, having tightly regulated park timings automatically renders parks exclusionary because these spaces are not conducive to their needs. Enabling better access for individuals with autism requires extending park hours throughout the day. Making parks disability-friendly is a matter of physical and spatial infrastructure and using better park management techniques.

Similarly, individuals with locomotor disabilities face exclusion due to poor physical infrastructure. Several parks in the city lack wheelchair access and disability-friendly toilets. Adopting universal design principles in park development is vital for promoting access. Although there have been efforts to incorporate disability-friendly infrastructure, the attitude is segregationist. As experience in Cubbon Park demonstrates, spaces within the public park are earmarked for developing accessible infrastructure, and the park as a whole does not embrace the principles of universal design. Parks play a role in promoting social cohesion for vulnerable groups and can be accessed free of charge. As the WHO report on urban green spaces notes, parks are crucial for residents physical and mental wellbeing. However, the existing ill-conceived park rules hinder their accessibility for marginalised groups. It is crucial that parks in their entirety are made accessible.

The city’s public parks are often viewed from a unidimensional perspective—that they are spaces of exercise and recreation for local residents. However, it is crucial to reimagine the diverse purposes that parks may serve. Public parks also have the potential to serve as resting spaces for informal workers like gig workers, domestic workers, and waste pickers who do not have spaces of rest that are free. Informal workers, working without a formalised office space, lack access to facilities such as toilets, drinking water, and places of rest; they also lack protection from hot weather or heavy rains. This has adverse health effects for outdoor workers. Developing infrastructure within public parks, such as clean toilets, drinking water, and adequate seating arrangements like benches and shaded spaces, is crucial to ensuring that the city’s informal workers have spaces to rest. Public parks may offer the city’s informal workers a cooling space away from urban heat islands and ensure better health. A crucial step towards promoting access to safe green spaces of rest for the city’s informal workers is to ensure that park timings are managed better.

Urban commons, such as public parks, thrive through use rather than depletion due to overuse. Urban commons are characteristically distinct in this sense because their sustenance depends on their utilisation. In fact, people are more likely to protect public parks against activities such as illegal land grabbing when they utilise them adequately. Therefore, where access to public parks is severely limited for diverse groups and purposes through park rules, it makes parks susceptible to neglected development and maintenance.

From this lens, restrictive rules on park usage may in fact create more problems than they solve. In an urban context, where space and land are limited and expensive, a neglected park could be easily diverted to another use, thereby significantly contributing to the diminution of urban green spaces. Thus, the issue of promoting access to parks for city dwellers is not solely a question of equal access to parks but also a question of the park’s survival and the development of urban green spaces. Therefore, adopting flexible timings and universal design principles in the usage and construction of public parks serves three crucial purposes: enabling and promoting access to vulnerable groups; ensuring parks are used for diverse purposes; and ensuring the park’s survival.

(The writer is a project fellow at Vidhi Karnataka)