Bengaluru East Corporation struggles with park deficit despite wealth

Bengaluru East City Corporation, which houses the city’s IT corridor, is not only the richest of the five corporations, but also the largest in area. However, it woefully lags in lung spaces. It has only 35 parks, compared with an average of over 300 parks in other corporations. While occupying 23.5% of the city’s civic area, the East Corporation has only 2.5% of the city’s parks. 

This data clearly indicates the deeper rot of unplanned and unregulated development on the city’s south-eastern outskirts, since the late 1990s, to accommodate the IT corridor and its housing needs. 

In layouts developed by both government agencies and private players, 15% of the area has to be earmarked for parks and playgrounds, which has led to so many parks in the core city areas. However, development in the IT corridor is dominated by apartments and gated communities, most of them unplanned. This is cited as one of the main reasons for the lack of public parks in the East Corporation. 

Erstwhile Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike had proposed to create Cubbon Park and Lalbagh-like lung spaces in the outer zones, but none of them took off the ground. 

Jagadish Reddy, of Varthur Rising, said that the Mahadevapura assembly constituency had around 14,000 acres of government-owned land as per revenue records, which could be developed into parks and playgrounds to offer a quality of life to the citizens of these areas. “But there is neither such a vision nor political will. Instead, large chunks of these government lands have been encroached upon and developed,” he said, highlighting the struggle to protect the Kadugodi forest and plantation land.

He said forest patches in the Corporation area have to be developed into tree parks and properly fenced with access control mechanisms to prevent garbage dumping. “This will preserve these forest patches and provide park-like spaces to the citizens,” he said. 

D.S. Ramesh, Commissioner, East Corporation, said presently there were no proposals to create new parks, but the focus was on redeveloping the existing parks. “While we have very few parks, due to a legacy issue with planning, we are blessed with 46 lakes, including the largest lakes of the city, like Bellanadur Lake and Varthur Lake. We are focusing on rejuvenating these lakes, so that they can act as both public spaces and lung spaces,” he said.