Mumbai’s playgrounds: A look into how and where Mumbaikars play
Part 2 of 3
Read Part 1 here.
Research question —
How do kids in Mumbai access spaces to play?
It’s not uncommon to see scores of kids playing on the streets in Mumbai. Growing up in Mumbai, like many others, I would play with my friends either in the compound space of our apartment complexes or on the streets right outside our apartments. Here is a breakdown on why this phenomena occurs and is so prevalent in every part of the city.
There are 24 municipal wards in Mumbai. For the sake of this research, I chose to focus on M-Ward [West].
The plan was to map out all the park and playground spaces in the city of Mumbai, but unfortunately I couldn’t find a consolidated data set that captured this information that I could use. Therefore I had to arduously collect all this data myself using Google Maps, which lead me to focus on just 1 municipal ward instead of the whole city.
Through my research I stumbled upon a map created by PK Das & Associates mapping out the open spaces in the city of Mumbai. This came in handy while trying to create the maps.
At first glance, this map makes it seem like there are a lot of spaces available for kids to play in. But a closer look however paints a very different picture.
Recreational grounds are private spaces like golf courses, gymkhanas, club grounds and grounds within corporate residential housing areas. Only a very small portion of the population has access to these spaces and hence, these spaces need to be discounted.
Spaces that are classified as Parks and Gardens, more often than not, are designed for their aesthetic value. These spaces usually have jogging tracks, flower beds, benches, fountains and other such things that make these spaces a nice place to go for a picnic or a place within the city to get close to nature. While many parks and gardens have swing sets and monkey bars, most don’t have the space for people to run around and play sports.
This leaves us with only the spaces classified as playgrounds. These spaces have plenty of open space for kids to run around and play sports. But the lack of too many of these spaces translates into over-crowding of the available ones.
Read Part 3 here.
