ahmedabad here is a small back of the envelope calculation you can do today between 2015 and 2017 amdavadis added 899 lakh vehicles on city roads while in the same period ahmedabad district lost 20 sq km of green space to rapid development according to the latest forest survey of india fsi report increasing population pressures burgeoning vehicle densities and bloating roads means more and more cutting down of treesa recent treecount conducted by social forestry department within ahmedabads municipal limits has revealed that there are only 11 trees per 100 people in ahmedabad city this is less than onetenth of a tree available per person sources said that the green cover of the city at present is just 466 of its geographical areaahmedabad city has 2640km of road network in the city now with this dismal tree density you can calculate that if you were to spend rs 556 lakh on buying tree saplings instead of a popular hatchback car it will fetch you 72800 three to four tall neem tree saplings at the cost rs 750 from the social forestry department these trees if planted on both sides of roads three metres apart can provide green cover to 10914km of road similarly each year the municipal corporation spends rs 18 crore on resurfacing and repair of 1km length of road this money can line 24 lakh trees along both sides of 3598km road network of the city ideally a city should have a green canopy that covers at least 15 of its geographical area this boils down to 20 sq m of green space per inhabitant in cities like ahmedabad and surat with the present constructed area only 10 of geographical limit can be covered says an official of the social forestry department most of the citys green spaces are concentrated in the western part of the city while in other parts there are hardly any greens spacesahmedabad municipal corporations amc garden department director jignesh patel says in south and north zones of the city which have a population of 2092 lakh there are just 36 parks while in the western part where there are 19 lakh people there are 133 parks the amc is trying to bridge this gap the forest department official added that ahmedabad city which is spread over 46985 hectare area has only 618 lakh trees while the city has a population of 5571 lakhsources in the department said that in the past few years plantation drives have not been taken up instead in the past couple of years trees have been cut in the eastern parts of the city where the major real estate development is taking place in the western parts too tree felling has been rampant in the outskirts said an official