Chennai Parks: Commercialization vs. Public Access - Urban Greening Debate

G Ananthakrishnan
Chennai is a crowded metro with few large green and blue spaces, but it has progressively commodified many of its small public parks and open spaces, turning some into gaudy, manicured, ticketed amusement parks. One must pay to enter and again buy tickets to access areas within. Whether the city needs such commercialised walled gardens or free, walkable greens, barrier-free and closer to their natural state, is the question before the C Joseph Vijay govt.

Some notable parks that became gated and priced after expensive, public-funded conversions include the erstwhile Agri-Horticultural Society garden in Gemini, renamed Kalaignar Centenary Park, and the Chetpet lake, under the fisheries department, which were dressed up at taxpayers’ expense. Typically, these cost about `25 crore each.
Various agencies are at work at the 118-acre Guindy Eco Park, in the former Race Course grounds, aiming to create a vast open area of lakes and walkways, with the first phase set to be completed by Oct. Here, car parking is part of the planning, but not bus routes to connect the site.

In parallel with these expensive restorations, civic projects have taken a toll on pre-existing inner-city green spaces in the absence of a conservation plan. The green mobility Chennai Metro Rail system ate into Panagal Park in the heart of T Nagar and Ashok Nagar park. Several smaller parks, the size of buttons, that are free to enter, are bursting at the seams due to population pressure. The Miyawaki forest system, which forces densely planted tall saplings to grow vertically faster than conventional methods, was tried by the Greater Chennai corporation in 2020, before its false promise became evident.

A third dimension is the state govt’s urban greening policy, which aims to promote green cover and ensure it is available to all sections of the public, with particular emphasis on low-income neighbourhoods.

The policy covers several types of land use, such as parks, roadside avenues, urban forests, wetlands, industrial and institutional campuses and residential areas. Intensifying population pressure and densification, officially projected to make 67% of the state urban by 2031, raises the question of whether the state can walk the talk on urban greening.

Many public projects undertaken during the erstwhile DMK regime focused on building green and blue infrastructure, after an impoverishing phase in which wetlands and marshes were lost in Chennai, headlined by the encroachment of the Pallikaranai marsh. Sponge parks were announced after successive years of flood, reaching a peak in 2021. Eco parks named after former chief minister C N Annadurai and late scientist M S Swaminathan were opened in suburban Porur, at considerable expense.

Tamil Nadu approached the recreational commons for long with socialist democratic credentials, rather than the neoliberal idea of collecting rents from parks, lakesides and gardens through ticketing. As someone who steered the state for a long time, the late M Karunanidhi was an ardent socialist; his ideas were reflected, for instance, in bus nationalisation. Ironically, the centenary park created in his name in the heart of the city carved up a wooded area into an amusement centre, charging heavily per enclosure or ride. It opened with an aviary of exotic birds such as South American macaws and parrots. An average visitor would have to budget a few hundred rupees to get an experience of the ‘park’. Can the average citizen in urban Tamil Nadu expect a philosophy that keeps public-owned lands and beaches truly free? Amusement parks may find a niche elsewhere, but should they come at the cost of wooded parks and walking areas, more so in a city that has only one contiguous green expanse, the Guindy National Park, Lok Bhavan and IIT, and a smaller Theosophical Society garden, all of which have entry barriers?

People with disabilities also want access. All parks should have ground-level equipment, in addition to basic accessibility via ramps, so they do not have to go to isolated facilities such as Santhome, Nolambur or Kotturpuram. Their demands lost traction in the run-up to the election.

Only free access to nature is consistent with democracy. Even where the govt imposes expensive interventions, necessitating an entry fee for maintenance, as in a good museum or conservatory, the norm is to make it free for students and seniors always, and for everyone on specified days of the week. This advances equity. Kitschy manicuring of parks and natural spaces to open the door to commerce cannot be a green measure.

GREEN LESSONS

• The Land Reform (Scotland) Act grants people the right to responsibly access hills, valleys, moors and water bodies for recreation and learning
• Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000 in England & Wales guarantees free access to mountains and coastal areas
• In Tamil Nadu, Edaikkal, near Ulundurpet is a lesson in how barren poramboke lands can become wooded havens. The collector, inspired by London’s Kew Gardens, planted a variety of trees across 500 acres in 1994. After his transfer, the area was virtually abandoned, but nature rewilded it over time, complete with deer, mongoose and snakes

CAN STATE WALK THE TALK?

• 3-30-300 | State’s urban greening policy aims to ensure every urban resident can see at least three trees from their home, lives in a neighbourhood with
• 30% tree cover, and has access to a quality green space within 300m
• Beyond Chennai | Experts say barren govt land across the 6,000sqkm Chennai Metropolitan Area and OSR lands inside gated communities could be converted into green spaces with indigenous flowering and fruiting trees. Model is expected to be replicated in Coimbatore, Trichy and Madurai. Suburban corporations and municipalities have few resources to pursue this, and need attention in mission mode

(The writer is a Chennai-based journalist)