mumbai aspires to be counted among the leading global cities but its lack of open spaces proves to be one of its greatest failings the lack of public areas for leisure relaxation fitness and sports appears even more pronounced when pitted against what other global cities offer their residents london for instance offers its residents 31 times the space that greater mumbai offers per person according to an analysis by open mumbai an exhibition that will restart at the nehru centre soon meanwhile new york city gives each of its residents nearly 26 times the open space each mumbaikar gets open mumbai has calculated that mumbai has just 11 square metres of open spacegardens parks recreation grounds rg and playgrounds pgper person the city has 25 sq km of gardens and parks 4 sq km of pg and 77 sq km of rg this adds up to just over 14 sq km of open spaces for 124 million people or 11 sq m per person this corresponds to the oftrepeated statistic that mumbai has a poor 003 acre of open space per 1000 people compare this to londons 3168 sq m per person or new yorks 264 sq m per person chicagos 176 sq m per person also puts indias financial capital to shame urban planners and environmentalists point out that the steady concretization of the city has robbed mumbai of even the natural environmental benefits it could get from being located by the sea various figures portray mumbais per capita open space ratio as ranking among the lowest of all the worlds major metropolitan areas and especially more so if the national park and mangrove creeks are not included as open spaces says naturalist and nature writer sunjoy monga when millions of people reside in such crammed conditions they are being denied a fundamental right no less critical than breathing he says monga adds that he is also concerned about the quality of spaces factored in mumbais open space count given that hundreds of sites marked as open spaces on the development plan dp are dumps and encroached areas open mumbai has managed to trace more than 1600 gardens parks pgs and rgs another 500 or so open spaces reserved in the dp are encroached the dissatisfaction among residents was best captured in a survey of 2000 mumbaikars conducted by the urban design research institute in 2011 nearly nine out of 10 people interviewed felt the city was too congested and 87 thought mumbai did not contain enough green cover what becomes very obvious from the wardwise comparison is the fact that the majority of the people who have been interviewed are not satisfied with the current situation of public spaces in mumbai and it shows quite plainly that there is a demand for more public spaces states the survey most mumbaikars year ned for gardens playgrounds and parks followed by sports complexes and fountains environmentalists blame the situation on open spaces not being given