Why are there so few open spaces and parks in Indian cities?

Every city faces the same choice once land runs scarce, and land always runs scarce in a city. A government can use land for built-up area, meaning buildings and roads for commerce and housing, or it can set land aside as open space, meaning parks, promenades, and public squares. The world’s best-run cities resolve that choice by using land efficiently. They pack more built-up area onto less land, and the land they save opens up as public space across the city.

India’s laws, regulations, and codes governing urban land block that efficiency. One regulation carries most of the blame: the Floor Area Ratio, or FAR, through which governments prescribe how tall a building may rise. In Mumbai, for instance, a building’s total floor area, adding every floor together, cannot exceed 1.3 times the area of the land beneath it, and most Indian cities set similarly low limits.

When a city permits less building, it frees up less open space. Take a project that needs 1,300 square metres of built-up area. At an FAR of 1.3, the builder needs 1,000 square metres of land. At an FAR of 13, the same project needs only 100 square metres, and the city saves 900 square metres of land for other use. The difference is stark.

FAR bears most of the blame, but other rules compound the problem. Building setbacks and the spread of large gated societies are privatising open space across Indian cities. The open ground between a building and the boundary wall around it keeps growing, and even where that open space survives, it drops out of the public sphere and serves private consumption only.

Gated societies such as Vasant Kunj in Delhi, most of Noida, and Yellahanka in Bengaluru fill their grounds with private lawns and clubhouses, locked behind gates and closed to anyone outside.

Cities that grow taller, ironically, gain open space rather than losing it. Bangkok and Singapore show the same pattern across South Asia, and Tokyo, despite carrying some of the largest built-up areas found anywhere in the world, holds huge open spaces too, because efficient land use frees the ground beneath its towers. India needs more open space, and the regulations blocking efficient land use are the place to start.