Page 02 · The state of urban spaces

The quality of life in Indian cities is falling

In India, understanding the state of urban public spaces is more critical than ever. Urban public space is the common ground that connects all public life: the matrix of natural, built and unbuilt space in a city.

Every scale is shrinking

From forest to footpath

The same story repeats at every size, from a national park to the strip of pavement outside your door.

Satellite view of forest edge in Mumbai — **Forest**Aarey and the national park, Mumbai

Satellite view of Taljai hill surrounded by buildings — **Hill**Taljai and the tekdis, Pune

Satellite view of the Mutha river through Pune — **River**The Mutha, Pune

Collage of news clippings on Bengaluru's poisonous lakes — **Lake**Bengaluru

A fenced neighbourhood playground in Bengaluru — **Playground**Girinagar, Bengaluru

A crowded market junction seen from above — **Footpath**Every street

Satellite imagery: Google Earth

30 warning signs we track

Critically important urban public space indicators in the Indian context

Hover over or tap a photograph to read it.

01Strategic destruction and degradation of natural ecosystems in urban areas
02Male domination in public spaces
03Increasing urban pollution: air, water, noise, land, light and visual
04Decreasing public built and open spaces
05Poor quality of public transport and declining bus ridership
06Domination of private vehicles over public spaces
07Increasing disparity and inequality
08Inaccessibility for vulnerable groups
09Increasing encroachment on public spaces
10Poor quality of pedestrian infrastructure
11Decline in public health
12Antisocial behaviour in public spaces
13Discrimination in public spaces
14Increasing grey infrastructure over green infrastructure
15Increasing road rage, fights and murders in public spaces
16Undisciplined road users
17Increasing extreme weather: urban flooding and the urban heat island effect
18Including the LGBTQ community in public spaces
19Poor quality of architectural fabric
20Increasing cosmetic spaces and commercialisation of public spaces
21Increasing insensitivity towards people and animals in public spaces
22Unhygienic public spaces
23Increasing moral policing in public spaces
24Increasing nuisance of public festivals
25A fading sense of belonging towards the city and its public spaces
26Unlawful, abusive and violent behaviour towards common people by political and criminal mafias
27Political dominance in public spaces
28Increasing mob lynching in public spaces
29Gangs terrorising public spaces through beatings, murders, threats and destruction of public property
30Increasing intolerance in public spaces

Different symptoms. One loss: the space that belongs to everyone.

The Space Within explores these indicators in detail and traces their relationship with urban public space through case studies.

The scale of the loss

Three numbers

1.24 m²

of accessible open space for each Mumbai resident. India's own planning guidelines ask for 10 to 12 m².

79%

of Bengaluru's water bodies lost in four decades, as built up area grew 525%.

9/174

playgrounds planned in Pune's 1987 Development Plan actually available by 2013.

Sources: ORF Occasional Paper 241, 2020, citing URDPFI 2014; IISc study by T. V. Ramachandra and Bharath H. Aithal, reported by Firstpost, May 2016; Mid-Day, 16 April 2013.

Open space per person, in square metres

How much city do you get?

London

31.7

New York

26.4

Chandigarh

17.4

Bengaluru

2.0

Mumbai

1.24

Chennai

0.81

Pune*

~2.7 on paper

Norm 10 to 12

*Pune: gardens and playgrounds reserved in the 2025 plan for merged villages (162 ha for 6 lakh people); no citywide count is published. Others: Urban Greening Guidelines 2014 and city master plans, via Citizen Matters; London and New York, ORF 2017. Norm: URDPFI 2014.

Pune, in one number

1 playground for every

37,000

children under seven

3,37,062 children aged 0 to 6 (Census 2011). 9 playgrounds available (2013). Had the 1987 plan been built: one for every 1,900.

Death in the air

Air pollution

Indian cities are choked by polluted air. PM2.5 particles are smaller than 2.5 micrometres, about 3% of the width of a human hair, small enough to enter the bloodstream and raise the risk of respiratory disease, heart disease and lung cancer.

Air quality is one of the first things that defines a public space. Bad air keeps people away from their surroundings and turns the commons into a health risk.

In the 2025 World Air Quality Report, India ranked as the sixth most polluted country, and Loni in Ghaziabad was the world's most polluted city, at 112.5 µg/m³ of PM2.5 a year.

Exposure to PM2.5 over a few hours to weeks can trigger cardiovascular disease related mortality and nonfatal events; longer term exposure increases the risk for cardiovascular mortality to an even greater extent.

American Heart AssociationScientific statement, 2010

A man with his face covered walks along a railing in thick grey smog

When the water comes

Increasing urban flooding

Almost every metropolitan city in India now floods, and it happens more often each year. Urban flooding breaks the environmental, social and economic framework of a city and stops its daily life.

The cause is built into the city. Encroaching on open spaces, river floodplains, streams and hills changes how the land drains. Water goes where the plan forgot it had to go.

Katraj, Pune, 2019. Hills cut, streams built over. Ambil Odha flooded in September; at least 17 people died.

Cars and a taxi piled on top of each other after a flash flood in a residential lane

Vanishing open public spaces from cities

Open public spaces under stress

Open public spaces in Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru, Pune and Hyderabad are shrinking fast, and tier two and three cities are on the same path. Children's playgrounds and community spaces are replaced by towers, or by cosmetic spaces meant only for the well off.

Open spaces are removed from development plans by a nexus of private and public actors with vested interests. Court cases show developers and politicians together taking land reserved for children, elders and recreation.

2,141

trees felled for a Metro car shed in Aarey, Mumbai's green lung, over two days in October 2019, while citizens protested at the gates.

“Don't cut anything now.”

The Supreme Court, 7 October 2019. By then the felling was done.

Supreme Court record of proceedings on the felling of trees in Aarey, pinned above a satellite view of the national park

Mumbai · Sanjay Gandhi National Park

A forest inside a megacity. Watch its edge.

Four satellite views of the national park edge in 2000 above the same four views in 2023, with grey development spreading into green

Four points on the park's edge. Twenty three years. The grey moves in.

Google Earth imagery, compiled for The Space Within's 2023 series on encroachment of green spaces.

The Maharashtra Regional and Town Planning Act

How a playground disappears, legally

The plan

The Development Plan reserves land for a park, a playground, a school.

The wait

The city must acquire the land. Often it never does: no budget, no will.

The notice

After ten years, the owner serves a purchase notice under Section 127.

The lapse

If the city still does not act in time, the reservation lapses.

The tower

The land goes back to the owner and is built on. The playground stays on paper.

Plans that arrive late

Pune declared a plan for its merged villages in 2018. It missed every deadline; in 2025 a state town planner had to finish it. Even on paper it gives each resident about 2.7 m² of gardens and playgrounds.

What it costs people

Children play on roads. Streams built over turn into floods. Every lapsed reservation is a park a whole neighbourhood will never have.

Nothing illegal happened. That is the scandal.

Poisoning the lifelines

Encroachment on water bodies and water pollution

Most Indian cities grew on the banks of rivers and lakes. Rivers shaped them culturally, socially and ecologically, and their banks were among the first public spaces.

Cities were planned as if water bodies did not exist. Their ecology and the services they give residents were never counted, so they were filled, narrowed and used as drains.

The Central Pollution Control Board's 2025 assessment lists 296 polluted river stretches across India, based on 2022 to 23 monitoring.

Satellite image with a riverbank strip marked in red beside highlighted newspaper headlines on Bengaluru floods

Plastic and household waste piled on the bank of an urban stream

Roads over rivers and hills

Urban transport: traffic taking over public spaces

Footpaths become parking, buses lose riders to private vehicles, and new roads are drawn over hills and riverbeds. The street as a shared room is giving way to the street as a traffic lane.

A crowded market junction seen from above, with cars, autorickshaws, two wheelers and pedestrians sharing the road

Pune · Vetal tekdi

The hill they want to cut

1987A link road is drawn across Vetal tekdi, the city's largest green hill.
2016The Bombay High Court strikes it down until an impact assessment is done.
2025It is back. The Supreme Court tells PMC to get environmental clearance first. Twin tunnels and a ring road are planned on the same hill.

2.1 km

of road

1,440 to 7,000

trees at risk, by different estimates

~6 min

of commute it claims to save

News clipping on a road through Vetal tekdi above a photo of the forested hill

Meanwhile, on the other tekdis

Baner, July 2026. A hill dug at night beside the biodiversity park. PMC's own verdict: “the activity was illegal”.

Baner. A concrete structure on land reserved for a biodiversity park, still standing five years after PMC ordered it down.

Hinjewadi, 2004 to 2015. Hills became an IT park. Satellite archives become the series' signature: the same frame, years apart.

An old television set showing a satellite view of hills turned into an IT park

Hinjewadi, west Pune · 2004 to 2015

Hills to an IT park

Satellite archives become the series' signature: the same frame, years apart.

Imagery: Google Earth

On the record

The courts have said it

Supreme Court of India · 1991

Protection of the environment, open spaces for recreation and fresh air, play grounds for children, promenade for the residents, and other conveniences or amenities are matters of great public concern and of vital interest to be taken care of in a development scheme.

Bangalore Medical Trust v. B. S. Muddappa

Madras High Court · 2022

We have reached a situation where even if God encroaches upon a public space, the courts will direct the removal of such encroachments.

Justice N. Anand Venkatesh, reported in The Hindu, 25 March 2022

Supreme Court of India · Aarey, 2019

Don't cut anything now.

Special bench, 7 October 2019. 2,141 trees were already down.

National Green Tribunal · 2021

Environmental damage “cannot be dealt with by authorities at leisure.”

On untreated sewage entering India's water bodies, reported by PTI in The Hindu BusinessLine

Bombay High Court · Safe Cities symposium, 2013

Warped definitions of progress, fancier cars for the few, little or no attention to mass transit and public transport, public infrastructure and open spaces, lead to urban built forms that are incongruous and inappropriate.

Justice Gautam Patel, August 2013

From our research files