Ashwini Bhide, Mumbai’s municipal commissioner looked at the city’s green spaces and declared the city was doing better than New York or London.

“Given the kind of land area we have have done more than enough,” she said in response to a question from an Indian Express journalist about whether official efforts to create forests and parks were adequate. “We are better than New York or London if you see the per capita availability of green space.”

Definitions, as urban researcher Hussain Indorewala noted in a column in the Mumbai Mirror, are important. Green space, he pointed out, “includes natural areas, fields as well as playgrounds” – not all of which “may be available for play or recreation”.

Of the 31.5% of Mumbai’s area that the municipal corporation classifies as green space, Indorewala writes, 27.8% “is mostly inaccessible ‘natural areas’ (forest areas, mangroves, water bodies, etc)”.

Open space for recreation, though, is........

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