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Air apparent: Mridula Ramesh, on why India deserves its own Central Parks
We’re losing a kind of space race. It’s affecting the air we breathe, quality of life, our resilience and fortitude. We should get started. There is much to be done.
I fear death by admin. A realm in which credit-card snafus, travel booking mix-ups, endless calls and paperwork collide. That’s my hell, along with concrete jungles, overfilled garbage bins and lack of pavement space. Add jet lag after a 14-hour flight next to a screaming child, and you have a handle on my state of mind as we landed in New York City.
So, my teenage son and I decided to take a walk. We bundled up in scarves, hats, gloves and thick coats; it was below zero and the wind was howling. Outdoors, we were soon dodging tourists gazing at the Christmas decorations on Fifth Avenue. The night before, during dinner, a cousin had explained the local rules for segregation and composting. I wondered, as we walked, how much waste the holiday decorations would create.
About 20 minutes of brisk walking got us to Central Park. Christmas-themed, horse drawn carriages, and rickshaws with neon lights blaring hits from the ’80s, were clustered near the entrance. Touts asked if we wanted a tour, oblivious to the fact that the park’s founders had wanted it to be free of commercial concerns. We declined, and walked past stalls selling magnets and posters, nuts and drinks, beneath trees now covered in snow.
The sun had begun to set, even though it was only 1.30 pm. As we headed deeper into the park, I felt calmer, even a little hopeful. Whatever Central Park was doing to me, it was doing to others too. Another day, we went on the carousel, a glorious merry-go-round of 57 wooden horses fashioned in a Tsarist sensibility, hand-carved by Jewish Russian immigrants in 1908. (The carousel features at the end of The Catcher in the Rye, as an embodiment of childhood Hope.)
Soon, we heard music and wandered toward it down some steps, just as the sun was sinking, bathing the surroundings in golden light. A woman in a red velvet ballgown was posing, bare shoulders oblivious to the cold, adding her own drama to the tableau. We came upon two old men, one playing a violin and the other a cello, in the biting cold. Their tunes were by turns jaunty and bittersweet. We placed a token in their basket and walked on.
This, as I later learned, was Bethesda Terrace, one of the Park’s most well-known features, a reflection of its designer Calvert Vaux’s philosophy: “Nature first, second, and third—architecture after a while.” We passed a giant statue of an angel, before coming to a frozen lake fringed with trees at the far end, with ducks standing on the ice noodling for food. Suddenly, something startled them and they took off, in a moment of sheer beauty; more graceful and more synchronised than any ballet could ever hope to be.
We walked back, winding through what in summer would be carefully tended wilderness, and my son spotted a street performance underway. Three young men were dancing to a fast, infectious beat; music is an enduring element of the park. On another visit, in the snow, we watched a man belt it out with his drums. Concerts are held here regularly. Today, the dancers were drawing an audience that turned out to contain visitors from New Zealand, France, Nepal and Texas, all part of the 42 million who come to the park each year seeking beauty or solace in the heart of New York City.
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How was this park born?
The park is over 150 years old. In the 1840s, as the city exploded northward, wealthy New Yorkers feared that Manhattan would become crowded and unhealthy, like industrial London or Paris. They pushed for a large public park — not merely for leisure, but to tap into Nature’s redeeming power. After a three-year debate, the government authorised one in 1853, between 59th and 106th Streets. The park itself was built in phases between 1858 and 1873.
The land was not empty. A small part of it was seized from Seneca Village, a mixed-race community — a lasting stain on a space imagined as belonging to all New Yorkers. Over the next few years, thousands of workers, including German gardeners, Irish labourers and Yankee engineers, transformed this swampy, rocky land into a refuge that today holds woodlands, several fields and lakes, a skating rink, a fountain, and paths crisscrossing across fashioned wilderness.
The park has lived through the Civil War (1861-65), the Gilded Age (roughly 1870s-1900), Great Depression, two world wars, the hippie era, the birth of the internet, and, I dare say, will live through the age of AI. The secret to its success is its adaptability: It began as a playground of the rich, with carriage drives and promenades. As transport networks expanded, New Yorkers of all classes arrived, and it became the city’s backyard. In 1870, the Metropolitan Museum of Art rose beside it, reflecting a 19th-century faith that nature and culture together could elevate taste (and lift land values). Together, they represent an ideal, a place democratic in access, if elite in conception, that transforms the city’s social and spatial geography.
In the 1930s, the Lower Reservoir, rendered obsolete by upgrades to the city’s water system, was drained and, with President Franklin D Roosevelt’s New Deal labour, remade into the Great Lawn and Turtle Pond, cementing the park as a venue for mass culture, hosting concerts by performers from Paul Simon to the New York Philharmonic. The park has also played muse to scores of books, plays and movies through the decades.
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The ’70s saw urban budgets fall. Maintenance of the park collapsed; garbage piled up and crime rates rose.
To fight back, citizens formed the Central Park Task Force, leading to the Central Park Conservancy, a public–private partnership that now runs the 843-acre space. A mix of private funding and professional restoration revived neglected paths, landscapes and monuments, turning it from a symbol of urban decay into a model of civic pride and stewardship. Their website claims they channel $100 million annually into the park to generate $1 billion in economic activity, a fabulous return on investment.
Why am I writing about Central Park?
Because green spaces make cities climate-resilient.
Concrete and asphalt soak up sunlight and radiate it back, creating urban heat islands that leave cities hotter than their surroundings. Green cover breaks this cycle by cooling the air through evapotranspiration (think, plants sweating) and by shading and reflecting sunlight, reducing the amount of heat absorbed in the first place.
Studies show greenery can cut urban temperatures by 4 to 24 degrees Celsius, depending on scale and context. Yet a recent World Bank report showed that 14 of 24 Indian cities studied have less than 0.5 sq metres of green open space per person — a fraction of WHO’s recommended minimum of 9 sq metres. (New York City, incidentally, has about 13 sq metres of green space per person.)
Next, water. India’s rainfall is unusual: far more seasonal than in most places, and concentrated into far fewer rainy days. This reality shaped the design of ancient Indian cities, but is largely ignored by modern ones, with floods and droughts following as a consequence. Indian cities of yore were studded with lakes, often manmade by bunding low-lying areas to capture rainwater, which percolated underground, supporting groundwater in the dry season.
The Sundaram Climate Institute (which I set up and head) found that urban waterbodies, especially those with green spaces around them, kept local groundwater levels higher by about 200 ft. Community lay at the centre of these lakes, in ancient times, with festivals and stories keeping people hooked. It worked, until we forgot, and began turning these lakes into neighbourhoods, offices and garbage dumps.
Lastly, as I can personally attest to and as the science shows, Nature in cities serves as verdure for the spirit, something that is going to be increasingly tested as the climate changes.
According to the World Bank, India’s urban population is set to nearly double between 2020 and 2050, reaching 951 million, with more than half the new infrastructure and buildings yet to be built. Green spaces must be central to this infrastructure, which is where lessons from Central Park come handy, because studies highlight the falling green cover in Indian cities.
Take Mehrauli Archaeological Park in New Delhi, where every step traverses centuries of history. When I visited a few years ago, it stood in urgent need of love, some of which has since arrived. Delhi is relatively fortunate. More tragic is the fate of hundreds of urban lakes scattered across India, many of which double as garbage dumps. While the recent census of water bodies in 2023 was a welcome move, much more needs to be done.
Part of the challenge is incentives: officials are frequently transferred, giving them too little time to take ownership or build lasting community engagement. That’s where, as with Central Park, public-private partnerships could help. The arts, performance and music, need to be co-opted, echoing the Park’s ideal that Nature and high culture can elevate the spirit and draw crowds in. Meanwhile, Sundaram Climate Institute found that a properly maintained urban lake could also support dozens of livelihoods through maintenance, tourism and local food vendors alone.
Back in New York, my son and I brushed snow off our coats after a snowball fight. Laughing, we walked past a man blowing large bubbles into the wind, their giant skins forming a psychedelic rainbow. I felt lighter, able to place my “trials” in perspective. I mentioned this to my son, and he said, “That’s Nature being channelled, not harnessed”.
(Mridula Ramesh is a climate-tech investor and author of Watershed. Reach out via tradeoffs@climaction.net. The views expressed are personal)
