Open green spaces should be prioritized in modern cities in TZ

Shimbo Pastory

This article was published in The Citizen Newspaper, Tanzania on 3rd December, 2023.

One of the globally common failures of poorly planned cities is the lack of open spaces. When the city is not well planned, it is difficult to allocate space effectively. It works the same way as a disorganized personal room or house. The house can be big and spacious enough but when there is disorder, the space will never suffice.

Open spaces greatly enrich the lives of city dwellers, affording them some quiet, cool air, breathing space to relax and walk, and a good outdoor environment for children to play freely. All these are important as they influence the health and well-being of city dwellers. They can also be used as social spaces for people to meet and relax with family and friends.

There were obviously compromises in the past which have made cities like Dar es Salaam not to have enough open spaces for the public. With cities being either planned or developed now there is a need to consider this.

Cities should not be full of structures, buildings, businesses and service facilities all over. Open spaces with trees and green hugely contribute to the lives of the people and the value of the environment and enable interaction with nature.

Research establishes that green spaces in urban areas play a huge role in mitigating the effects of pollution and they help to reduce a phenomenon known as the urban heat island effect, which refers to heat trapped in built-up areas, which is generated by human activities concentrated in the centre of cities, transport, shops, people, and factories (Callum Mair, City Life: Why are green islands important? National History Museum).

However, these spaces should not only be allocated but also managed appropriately such that they are safe and clean for use. Safety is a huge motivation for outdoor activities, alongside accessibility, cleanness, and availability of necessary human services such as water, shops, easily accessed exit routes and toilets. Safety assurance for pets is also a more inclusive consideration.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) recommends 9 square metres of urban green space (UGS), which should be accessible within 300 metres from one’s home (WHO: UGS Interventions and Health: A Review of impacts and effectiveness, Oct. 2017). We can see how serious this is if we intend to attain a healthier urban life in the future. We have averagely bigger cities and less concentration as compared to cities in Europe.

Nonetheless, comparing Dar es Salaam with a city like London, Dar is a bit bigger with a land area of 1,590 (sq. km.) while London has a land area of 1,572 (sq. km.) however, London has over 3,000 open spaces (often referred to as parks) which are accessible to the public and are adequately maintained by the government. It is hard to say how many public open spaces are there in Dar es Salaam, but obviously very few.

Mbeya City, as a practical example, has a land area of 34,113 (sq. km.) with a population of a bit less than 500,000 (Mbeya City Council: Takwimu. Web.). Yet where the population is more concentrated, that is Mbeya town, there are not enough designated public open spaces anywhere apart from football fields in schools and farms. Even if those spaces are not going to be prepared now, they should at least be left out as open spaces. The city has a huge growth potential, but there is a danger if it continues to grow the way it is. There are trees in the town but there are not enough open spaces.

In Tanzania, we have the land and we are blessed with good weather to support plants and trees almost everywhere in the country. All we need is serious multidisciplinary planning so as to assess and predict the needs of urban dwellers in the future and effect the plans in a cross-sectoral collaborative approach so as to achieve the best. Left as they are, our cities will hardly be convenient to live in the future.

According to the United Nations World Population Prospects forecast, Tanzania will have a population of 137 million by the year 2050. This means there will be more than twice as many people as there are now. We need to plan ahead and secure a safer option for urban living which is incorporating enough green spaces in the bigger picture for a better future of the generations to come.

Aside from comfort and fresh air, there are also health implications when there are not enough open green spaces. Cecil Konijnendijk, director of Nature Based Solutions Institute (NBSI) and former professor of urban forestry at the University of British Colombia, establishes in his research that there is a link between the rise in statistics of children’s depression and Attention-Deficit/ Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) globally among children in concentrated urban areas where there are no enough green spaces. He calls the cause of this ‘a disconnect from nature.’ We need these spaces in the cities for the integral well-being of all city dwellers.