Mumbai: Days after the BMC launched a dedicated WhatsApp helpline for citizens to report open manholes following the death of a 55-year-old man who fell into an uncovered manhole on Khairani Road in Kurla, a report by the Urban Design Research Institute (UDRI) and NAGAR has proposed a similar digital platform to safeguard the city’s parks and public open spaces.The report titled ‘Public Open Space Mapping and Management Strategy for Mumbai’ by Urban Design Research Institute (UDRI) and NAGAR (NGO Alliance for Governance and Renewal) recommends a city-wide app through which citizens can report encroachments, damaged infrastructure, poor maintenance and other issues affecting public open spaces, enabling real-time monitoring and quicker civic response. It forms part of a proposed public open space strategy—the first of its kind in India—which would complement Mumbai’s Development Plan (DP) by creating a long-term framework for protecting, managing and monitoring open spaces.
CJP Jantar Mantar Protest Updates
The report proposes a stakeholder action matrix that maps the most common issues affecting parks and open spaces, assigns responsibility to the govt agency concerned and tracks resolution, thereby creating a closed-loop grievance redressal system.It further recommends using citizen feedback to identify improvement projects and link them to dedicated funding streams, including Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) contributions and MP/MLA development funds, allowing investments to be directed where they are needed most. The report identifies the public open space strategy, stakeholder action matrix and a project prioritisation and funding framework as the three pillars of an effective city-wide open space management system.The researchers argue that while the DP identifies land reserved for parks and recreation, it does not provide a comprehensive framework for protecting, managing and monitoring these spaces over time. “Mumbai’s public open spaces are governed by a complex web of planning regulations, government agencies and ownership structures,” the report states, adding that a city-wide strategy would bring multiple land-owning agencies under a common governance framework.The report also recommends setting up a multi-disciplinary Oversight Cell to manage public open spaces measuring more than 4,000 sq m. The proposed body would be responsible for long-term stewardship, ecological management, maintenance and i mplementation of the city’s open space strategy.Anuradha Parmar, executive director, UDRI, said, “The DP and the BMC alone cannot deliver well-managed open spaces. Mumbai needs an integrated open space management strategy, backed by accurate data, to enable decentralised citizen stewardship and a clear framework for directing resources towards projects that communities value. We also need a platform to imagine a larger vision for Mumbai’s public spaces, so that individual open spaces are no longer planned in isolation but are connected through a cohesive strategy aligned with the city’s environmental and development goals.”
