Somewhere down the line, Srinagar began losing the things that made it a city rather than a collection of buildings.
Its open grounds became construction sites, its wetlands became real estate, its flood basins became plots, and its green patches became tempting pieces of urban property.
The historic city now keeps building bridges while losing the spaces that once gave its people room to breathe.
A recent appeal by a civil society group to protect Srinagar’s green and open spaces should therefore be read as more than another dispute over a piece of land. It is a warning about the type of city Srinagar is becoming.
Every vacant patch now seems to invite a question: Why is this land still empty?
That question exposes a dangerous idea in urban development, where an open space counts as wasted space until someone finds a commercial or residential use for it.
A playground becomes a building site, a green patch becomes parking, a wetland becomes developable land, and a public ground becomes an asset waiting for monetisation.
Srinagar has already paid a heavy price for this logic.
Its wetlands and flood basins once absorbed water, cooled neighbourhoods and supported an urban ecology that had evolved over centuries. Encroachment and unchecked construction have reduced that capacity. Every monsoon now reminds the city of what it surrendered.
The loss also reaches deeper than flooding.
A city without commons becomes a city where every useful space belongs to someone.
Children lose places to play, older people lose places to sit beneath trees, neighbourhoods lose their breathing room, pedestrians lose shade, and communities lose the physical spaces where strangers once became neighbours.
Cities elsewhere have begun moving in the opposite direction.
Seoul restored the Cheonggyecheon stream after removing a major roadway. New York protects public parks as essential urban infrastructure. Singapore treats greenery as part of its city planning rather than decoration. Barcelona has experimented with superblocks that return streets to people.
These examples differ greatly, but they share one principle: public space creates public value.
Srinagar can adopt the same principle without copying another city.
The government can map every remaining wetland, playground, park, flood basin and major open ground and place them under a clear public-space protection framework. Local communities can become custodians rather than spectators. Schools, resident groups and municipal bodies can maintain neighbourhood greens. Development permissions can account for lost shade, drainage and public space, rather than merely built-up area.
The city also needs a cultural shift. Srinagar must stop treating every unbuilt parcel as an opportunity for construction.
A bridge connects two places, but a common space connects people to their city.
Srinagar has spent years building the first kind of connection. Its future may depend on preserving the second.
This article has been automatically published using a syndicated feed. The content is sourced externally and may not have been reviewed by The Freelancers Team.
