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Chennai and smaller cities and towns in Tamil Nadu are under pressure from steady urbanisation and need more parks , playgrounds, and wetlands to improve the quality of life for residents. One question that has arisen is whether new or redeveloped public places acquired on behalf of all residents should charge a fee for entry. Parks and wetlands fall under green and blue infrastructure, which is seen as an important facet of sustainable cities offering walkable spaces, green cover, flood buffering, pollution reduction, and temperature regulation.
They are also pathways to achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Tamil Nadu responded early to the need to protect parks by enacting the Tamil Nadu Parks, Playfields and Open Spaces (Preservation and Regulation) Act, 1959, which requires local bodies to ensure that these designated spaces are free of encroachment and serve as valuable commons accessible to all. The trend towards the preservation of parks, however, increasingly favours an expensive engineered approach, and a lot of new construction took place over the past several years.
The 58-acre Tholkapia Poonga Adyar Eco Park was taken up for "redevelopment" at `42.5 crore in 2023, while `50 crore was earmarked to create an eco-park in the reclaimed Perungudi waste dump site. Wetlands are being promoted as tourist spots with boat rides, bridges, and other attractions.
Chetpet Lake, cleaned up in 2017, is set for a `20 crore upgrade with walkways, kiosks, photo points, a gym, and play zones. The Adyar eco park, restored some years ago with a strong emphasis on ecology education, stood out for that reason and harbours greater biodiversity. While the underlying goal is to restore lost ecology, development projects tend to place lower emphasis on ecosystem services centred around water, trees, plants, birds, and wildlife, and instead focus on built structures for amusements and commercial activity.
In many cases, the investments are followed by ticketed access to what is essentially a commons. Large wetlands such as the 300-acre Periyakulam and five others in Coimbatore were redeveloped under smart city funding, with free walking and seating access. But naturalists say speedboat rides at Ukkadam Lake disturb migratory birds.
At Valankulam, another smart city project costing `66 crore, pollution-fed hyacinth growth choked the lake and halted boating. The plan to create sponge parks in Chennai has, by comparison, proceeded slowly, with the latest tally being only six such facilities completed out of a planned 30 during 2024-25. But the govt announced seven more sponge parks for the Chennai Metropolitan Area with an outlay of `88 crore for the current year.
A scientific study on the use of public parks in Hyderabad published in the journal Urban Forestry and Urban Greening found that the location of the open space, perception of safety, and whether there was an entrance fee determined the level of use and satisfaction. Most people visited such parks for walking and exercising, and in many locations, women were minority users due to various reasons, including work burdens. Birdwatching drew the least number of visitors, lower than those who wanted solitude.
User fees limited access, the study found, with low-income families visiting only on special occasions. Even the middle class preferred free-entry spaces. This raises key questions: Is the policy of pricing entry keeping people out of prime urban greens? Can open areas be developed into green and blue sites that have only walking trails and visitor seating that bring about social and ecological cohesion, and do not involve heavy investment and ticketed entry? It would still be possible to create other amusement centres with joy rides, boating, and glass bridges, while retaining the ecological integrity of parks.
This concern is important as rising property prices are gentrifying cities, while distant suburbs are not on the radar of policymakers. In Chennai, revamped parks in central areas such as Adyar charge entry, while suburbs lack quality open spaces. A nature-focused approach could add to the aesthetics of parks and offer much-needed open space for children living in cramped homes.
Greater Chennai Corporation claims there are 835 parks, but their total area is unclear, and data from Tambaram and Avadi is unavailable online. In Madurai, a children's amusement area and a dancing fountain were bootstrapped onto an HR and CE department eco-park in Thirupparankundram that charged an entry fee, but they fell into disuse without a sound maintenance plan. Other smaller public parks are designed more as recreation centres with no emphasis on ecology, biodiversity, and wildlife.
The World Health Organization views urban greening as a social and health investment that must be built into long-term planning. Community involvement in upkeep and monitoring will make it sustainable and equitable. In Chennai, Open Space Reservation land is often misused as private parks in gated communities, restricting public access while charging buyers for what should be shared green space.
Local communities need to be involved as park champions, without which OSR lands fall into decay in CMDA-approved layouts. These lands are then sought by other govt agencies to put up various incompatible structures. Such actions negate the objective of having more parks and open spaces in Chennai.
A return to the egalitarian idea of parks as open green spaces would work for all. (The writer is a Chennai-based journalist) Email your feedback with name and address to southpole.toi@timesofindia.
com.
