ANNOUNCEMENTS
Since historic times the health of cities has been closely associated with urban planning. While open spaces are not the sole contributing factor to a healthy urban environment, it definitely is a critical precursor for the same. Open spaces in urban settlements perform several functions, including maintaining an ecological balance, improving public health, and providing people spaces to recreate. Additionally, they also provide positive externalities to neighbourhoods and add value to adjoining land. In developing countries, open space projects often lack priority due to limited access to funds by local governments, as well as the scarcity of land in cities. Another consequence of the same is an unequal distribution of open space across the city and thus, inequitable access to the same.
In India there exist two sets of guiding frameworks for the provision of open spaces at the national level- The Urban Greening Guidelines, 2014 by TCPO, and the URDPFI Guidelines 2015 by MoUD. The states are to formulate their provisioning framework, along similar lines. At a city level, the provision of open spaces is done vis-a-vis master plans or development plans. These are statutory land-use plans and provide the percentage of the total city land allocated for the function of open spaces.
Intercity and intra city variations in the provision of open spaces are common place in Indian cities. While intercity variations occur due to a variety of factors such as differences in state guidelines, geography, topography, etc. intracity variations are more complex in nature. Intracity variations of open space provisioning are a result of gaps in planning, implementation, monitoring, and review of open space infrastructure. They normally occur amongst different socio-economic neighbourhoods, and lead to inequitable access to city-level open space resources.
GMDA has developed a monitor and review framework for the development of Gurugram city in the form of a Liveability Metric, with a set of 42 KPIs. The Draft Social Infrastructure plan by GMDA, addresses several of the KPIs on health and environment. This study is to aid the research on the thematic of ‘Open Spaces’, as a part of the social infrastructure plan for GMA. It will help in identifying and defining the inequitable resource distribution of open spaces, as well as access to the same by the different socio-economic groups for the city of Gurugram. It will add to the understanding of the gaps in infrastructure provisioning for low-income neighbourhoods for the city of Gurugram and theorize how these gaps can be addressed. The study seeks to address a broader issue of inefficiency in optimization of scarce land resources for the provision of open spaces, vis-a-vis policy, and on-site intervention for the low-income neighbourhoods in Gurugram city.
Keywords: Open Spaces, Gurugram City, Low-Income Neighbourhoods, Social Infrastructure Plan, Liveability Metric.
