Tree-conomics

Urban planners often treat parks as amenities, but they are in fact public health infrastructure. Pics/iStock

When I walk through modern cities, I often feel as if the Earth is holding its breath. The roads radiate heat, the drains choke, and the sky seems to shrink behind glass towers. We speak of progress, but we have forgotten that survival itself is the highest form of progress. Look closely at any major city today. Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Chennai - each one tells the same story in different accents: the story of forgotten rivers, vanished ponds, and stolen greens.

The 50-50 balance (50 per cent governed by the natural world and 50 per cent by humans) has been broken so badly that most cities now have less than 15 per cent green cover. A city that should have had half its space breathing freely has sealed itself in asphalt. That imbalance shows up in our health, rising heat, polluted air, floods in the monsoon, drought in summer and an epidemic of anxiety and breathlessness. Heat islands form wherever trees vanish. A patch of bare concrete can be five to ten degrees hotter than a tree-covered zone. Multiply that by millions of square metres, and you understand why cities now feel like ovens. The tragedy is that we have normalized this suffocation.

The signs are all around us - sparrows gone missing, frogs falling silent, drains flooding with the first rain and children growing up with inhalers instead of slingshots. This is what happens when the 50-50 law of nature is ignored. Cities forget to breathe, and so do their citizens.

Even economics echoes the same truth. The most expensive localities in any city are those closest to parks, lakes or tree-lined boulevards. The logic is simple: people pay for peace, oxygen, silence and beauty. Yet we still treat greenery as a decorative luxury, not the foundation of value. I often say: The only thing real about real estate is greenery. Everything else is imitation - the concrete, the marble, the metal, the branding, the brochures. All of it can crumble, all of it can fade. But the value of a tree, once planted, only increases with time. A peepal planted today will be a monument of air and shade a century later.

Developers spend fortunes on artificial landscapes, vertical gardens and rooftop lawns, yet they forget that the real wealth is in soil that is alive. The rest is an illusion built on borrowed time. Because what nature creates is the only authentic part of what we call property.

Nature must not remain a visitor in the house of governance; she must be a co-governor. Fifty per cent of every city must be governed by the natural world. What if every urban masterplan had an ecological seat, a ministry of trees and water bodies with legal authority over half the land? What if every new project had to pass a balance audit, proving that its green footprint matched its built footprint? Imagine if every township or housing society were designed like an ecosystem: half built, half breathing. Roads lined with avenue trees, every block opening into a community garden, every rooftop growing food and every rainwater drain leading into a restored pond. That would be a real smart city; not one ruled by gadgets and sensors, but by shade and silence.

The world keeps chasing new technologies, but no machine has yet equalled the efficiency of a tree. Nature is the original engineer. We need only give her room to work.

This principle of balance is not a dreamer's poetry; it is scientific design. Having half the city under natural cover ensures climate stability. Trees regulate temperature through transpiration. Water bodies recharge aquifers. Open soil allows percolation and prevents flooding.

Biodiversity corridors maintain insect populations that pollinate our crops. Even mental health studies show that access to greenery reduces anxiety, improves concentration and lowers crime.

Urban planners often treat parks as amenities, but they are in fact public health infrastructure. The oxygen from trees reduces particulate matter. The moisture from lakes cools the air. The microbes in healthy soil regulate air chemistry. Every living patch of Earth is performing silent,
unpaid labour for the city. If we gave back 50 per cent of space to the natural world, she would repay us a thousandfold in air, in water, in sanity.

Chandigarh was built with the idea of providing breathing spaces. Le Corbusier's grid included gardens, lakes and tree-lined avenues. The city still feels calmer because it respects open ground as sacred. But even Chandigarh is under pressure now, with new suburbs eating into its peripheries. Bengaluru, once the city of lakes, thrived on its water network. Every lake overflowed into another, creating a self-cleaning system. When builders filled them up, floods followed. It was not punishment from heaven; it was simple hydrology.

Singapore offers another model. It calls itself not a ‘garden city' but a ‘city in a garden'. That subtle shift of words changes everything. Every road, roof and wall is seen as potential green cover. That is fifty-fifty justice in practise. I have seen glimpses of this balance even in our own work at Give Me Trees Trust. From Mayur Vihar's rooftops to Karma Lakelands' greens, from small village nurseries to city school plantations, each patch of reclaimed nature becomes a heartbeat of balance. The idea is the same: don't fight for space, share it. The idea of fifty-fifty justice is not only
scientific or economic; it is deeply spiritual.
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The Upanishads speak of balance between the seen and the unseen worlds, between desire and duty. Buddha found enlightenment under a tree, not in a temple. The tree became the teacher because it embodied equilibrium: rooted in earth, reaching for the sky, taking only what it needs, giving everything back.

We do not need new philosophies. We only need to remember the old ones. I dream of cities where schools are shaded by peepal and neem, where buses stop under trees, where offices have gardens instead of smoking zones, where ponds are community centres and where birds are not visitors but residents. Let our cities become forests of cohabitation. Every citizen should be able to walk to a green space within five minutes. Every rooftop should hold a pot or two. Every government office should adopt a grove. Every corporate building should plant its conscience along with its logo. This is not an impossible vision. It only demands that we change the definition of development. Let us measure growth not by square feet of cement but by square feet of shade. Let GDP also mean Green Domestic Product.

When 50 per cent of urban space is governed by nature, the other 50 will automatically flourish. The city will breathe again, not as a machine, but as a living organism. We can begin today, not by waiting for policies, but by planting and protecting. One tree, one pond, one rooftop at a time. We often speak of saving nature, but perhaps it is she who keeps saving us, silently, again and again.

Extracted with permission from Ghosts On Peepal Trees by Swami Prem Parivartan, published by Ebury Press, Penguin Random House India