Being a new parent transforms one’s relationship with their city. The park is central to this change as it becomes an essential third space. These outings are not merely recreational, but also require active engagement with everything, from the grass to the play area and even the security guards. And such interactions can lead to an abiding relationship with a city’s parks. Something similar happened to Mumbai resident Anca Florescu Abraham, 44, when she became a mother about a decade ago, and started frequenting local parks.
An interior designer and landscape artist, Abraham, who lives in Khar West, soon realised there were some niggling pain points in parks, besides the fact that as public spaces they were untapped. Some parks were closed on certain days without prior notice, a few had rules like “no stepping on the grass”, and most had restrooms with dubious hygiene. This led Abraham to launch Love Your Parks Mumbai (LYPMumbai) in 2018. “I started it out of a growing concern that Mumbai’s open spaces are both undervalued and underutilised. The idea was simple: if people don’t emotionally connect with their parks, they will not fight for them,” she explains.
LYPMumbai nurtures relationships with parks through experiences such as nature walks, group singing sessions and fitness workshops. A few weeks ago, they planned an event, Sing For Your Parks, with people across age groups participating in jam sessions at Jogger’s Park in Bandra West and Pushpa Narsee Park (PNP) in Juhu. They organised tree walks in Hanging Garden as well as the adjacent Kamala Nehru Park in March. Their end goal is to activate parks and “transform them from passive green spaces into active community hubs.”
Mobilising community through experiences is central to their modus operandi. “One of the biggest takeaways has been that people are hungry for meaningful engagement with public spaces; citizens don’t realise the value of these spaces until they begin to experience them differently and small interventions like a well-curated walk or a community event can completely change how a park is perceived and used,” observes Abraham.
She shares the example of PNP that was the venue for a weekend farmer’s market before the pandemic. The farmer’s market vanished after covid, and a new rule to stay away from the grass area was imposed by park authorities. “After visiting it for years before the pandemic and having amazing community get-togethers there, to go back and find that the grass was out of bounds was a bit of a shock. We had to create quite a few get-togethers, like yoga sessions and storytelling sessions with kids, and slowly we were able to take back the grass. Now, we have slacklining and acroyoga every Sunday, and it’s beautiful to witness the power of community.”
An emotional connection and community building facilitates care. One of the most recent cases is the coming together of citizens to save the trees marked for felling or transplantation at Nana Nani Park in Versova to make way for an exit road linked to the proposed Versova-Bhayander Coastal Road.
Another case is the scrapping of construction plans for underground parking lots at Bandra’s Patwardhan Park and PNP in Juhu due to local resistance in 2024.
When citizens are engaged, there is hope for better cities.