Four years ago, Hailey Kalyan moved from Moti Nagar to a gated community in Manikonda for a reason that had nothing to do with luxury or status. In fast-changing Hyderabad, the 40-year-old product manager just wanted his seven-year-old daughter to have a safe place to cycle.
Learning to cycle in Moti Nagar was proving to be a difficult task. There was little space in his apartment block apart from a tight parking area filled with vehicles. Outside, the fast-moving traffic left no safe place for a child to learn to ride his first bicycle.
He recalls, “For days I struggled to get it out. There was no safe place, no open space. Even something as basic as riding a bicycle became difficult.”
Today those worries seem far away. Every evening, her daughter cycles through the parks and paved tracks within the residential complex before going to her Kuchipudi class held on the campus itself. Families gather near the clubhouse, children take to the open spaces and residents move around without setting foot on the busy road.
But this move to welfare also came with a troubling realization. “In the colonies where we grew up, we met people from everywhere. Here, everything exists within a boundary. You mostly interact with people living in the same community, so exposure to different social groups and cultures is limited. These are not really open spaces; they are enclosed,” he sighs.
This paradox increasingly defines the changing urban landscape of Hyderabad: a city where private comforts are expanding, while shared public life is slowly but surely shrinking.
Throughout Hyderabad, especially in its western parts, a new urban pattern has taken hold, defined by gated communities, IT campuses and self-contained developments that act like private islands within the city.
Within these spaces, parks, walking tracks, club houses and cultural spaces are well-curated, well-designed and easily accessible. But finding truly shared public space beyond those boundaries is becoming increasingly difficult, and the consequences are beginning to play out in everyday life.
Families are increasingly looking for safer neighborhoods and open spaces for children. Youth gather on flyovers, outside cafes and on main roads as there are few places left where they can spend time freely. Even socializing with friends now often revolves around cafes, food courts and commercial places.
Earlier this month, one such gathering outside Gaura Palladium near Knowledge City attracted attention when large groups of youth gathered late at night, dancing, making videos and performing bike stunts before police arrived and dispersed the crowd. Videos of the incident soon spread on social media, with many users calling it Hyderabad’s latest “hangout place” or “reels haunt”.
According to urban planners, this episode reflects something bigger than law and order concerns. “When a city doesn’t design spaces for people, people start making their own spaces,” says architect and urban planner Shankar Narayan.
Describing Hyderabad’s developed landscape as a “city of islands”, he says, “Each development creates its own internal open space. But these are isolated and not connected to each other.”
Looking for a place and can’t find any place
For Chris Adams, a 27-year-old private school teacher, even meeting friends has become an exercise in logistics and expense: “I live in Sun City. Meeting up with a friend from Alwal starts with scrolling through apps like Swiggy or District to pick a café with good discounts. But after a point, everywhere starts to feel the same, with the same menu and the same setup. And you’re always spending money just to sit and talk. Are.”
What troubles them more is the disappearance of what urban planners call “third places,” places that are neither home nor workplace. “You start to wonder if there’s any place left where you can just be… sit, talk and exchange ideas without paying anything,” he says.
For adolescents, the lack of accessible public space shapes everyday expression. Keertan Rao, 15, of KPHB Colony, who makes dance videos for social media, says finding a place to practice or record often proves to be a challenge.
As the city expands, public spaces in Hyderabad shrink and privileged private spaces grow. | Photo Courtesy: Nagara Gopal
“There’s not enough space at home. So I go to parks or empty streets. But in some places, you’re not allowed, especially near office areas. And even where I do find space, people stare or comment. It becomes uncomfortable,” she explains and adds, “With so many young people now trying to express themselves, we need spaces where we can do so freely.”
The lack of such spaces is perhaps most visible on the roads and flyovers of Hyderabad. Crowds at the inaccessible Cheruvu Cable Bridge have repeatedly attracted attention, with people stopping to take photographs, spend time or simply take in the view, despite traffic and safety concerns.
Similar scenes also play out in other major streets and commercial districts, where cafes, food streets and expanses of office centers are temporarily transformed into informal gathering places after dark.
Even Cyberabad Police Commissioner M. Ramesh acknowledged the growing demand for such venues while recently addressing concerns about unsafe public gatherings. “There is a clear need for spaces where young people can gather, socialize and express themselves,” he says, stressing that activities that threaten public safety will not be tolerated.
Urban researcher T. Pawan Kumar, who has lived in Saidabad for more than 27 years, says the older parts of Hyderabad once offered much more organic public interaction. He remembers playing cricket in the open fields and badminton in a local park in Subramaniam Nagar Colony as a child. Those places no longer exist in the same form.
“The grounds have been converted into a crowded multi-generation park, while the badminton court has made way for a two-storey building,” he says.
According to him, old neighborhoods today face many pressures such as lack of land availability, poor maintenance of existing grounds, security concerns and changing perceptions about public spaces.
As traditional recreational venues are disappearing, commercial alternatives have begun to fill the void. “People are opening up or leasing their land to offer rooftop ‘box-cricket’ and pickleball courts, which are increasingly becoming new social spaces,” he explains.
Even established public spaces like Tank Bund and People’s Plaza have seen fluctuations in public participation due to maintenance issues and usability concerns. Efforts to revitalize these areas, from traffic-free Sundays to designated food streets, have faded over time. “The problem is not just about creating space. The problem is about understanding how people actually use it,” says Kumar.
For others, access alone does not guarantee comfort or safety. M. Rachna, an IT employee from Basheerbagh, says that despite appeals, she now avoids Tank Bund. “It’s a beautiful place, but the smell is very strong near the water,” she says. “As a woman, I have seen groups gathering in a way that feels intimidating. I avoid going there, especially on weekends.”
The model is built for growth, not for life
Urban experts attribute this disconnect to wide-ranging changes in planning priorities over the past two decades. Like many Indian cities, Hyderabad has also adopted a growth-first model since the 2000s, with a focus on IT corridors, special economic zones, commercial real estate and large-scale infrastructure projects.
In this process, local social spaces like parks, playgrounds, markets and public squares have slipped into the background. Entire urban areas emerged with limited space for informal interaction or large community gatherings. In many new areas, commercial spaces have effectively become the default social infrastructure.
This was followed by an immediate reaction from the residents themselves.
As office areas and residential centers expanded, informal gathering places began to emerge around tea shops, roadside eateries, food trucks and snack vendors on sidewalks and empty corners. Food streets across Hyderabad, from DLF in Gachibowli and ITC Kohinoor in Knowledge City to Masab Tank, Tank Bund and Parade Ground, have evolved into some of the most active social spaces in the city.
“This is what is now called placemaking,” says Narayan. “Globally, it is structured and deliberate. In India, we are reinventing things that already existed in old cities.”
Around the world, cities have long invested in such public environments – from Central Park and the Chicago Riverfront in New York to Tsim Sha Tsui Promenade in Hong Kong and Old Town Square in Prague. In India, major social anchors include Marine Drive, Bandra Reclamation and Bandra Bandstand in Mumbai, Cubbon Park in Bengaluru, and Dilli Haat and Central Park in Connaught Place, New Delhi.
Hyderabad’s own planning framework once recognized the importance of such shared spaces. “The mandate exists, but it is confined within project boundaries. Each development provides for itself. These spaces do not come together as a shared public environment,” he says.
Urban planner and development expert Maheep Singh says that the intention has also changed with time. “Open spaces have become a compliance requirement rather than a planning priority,” he says.
Despite several development norms, observers say Hyderabad still lacks a city-wide benchmark for accessible open space. The result is a city where parks and recreation areas exist, but often as fragmented, privatized or inaccessible areas cut off from the larger urban fabric.
Private spaces are filling the public void
Inside Knowledge City in Rayadurgam, amidst glass office towers and restaurants, a small terraced plaza with a patch of lawn attracts couples, families and groups of youth every evening.
“It’s one of the few places where we can just sit,” says a young woman and regular visitor.
But entry comes with conditions. She says, “It’s not completely open to anyone at any time. There have been occasions when I’ve been asked why I’m here. But if you want a place to spend time then that’s the compromise.”
In the absence of strong public infrastructure, private development is moving quickly to fill the gap. IT campuses and commercial centers now include food courts, performance spaces and open plazas, creating vibrant indoor ecosystems.
But planners caution against seeing them as a substitute for public space, arguing that the private sector is doing so from a commercial perspective. Saying that recreational infrastructure should be decentralized across the city, Singh says, “Each part of the city or each corporation should have several large, accessible public spaces. This will also reduce travel distance and congestion.”
Due to the increasing demand for such spaces, the Telangana government proposed the development of a ‘T-Square’ at Rayadurgam in 2024, a 24×7 public plaza inspired by New York’s Times Square. Envisioned as a multi-functional urban center in a hi-tech city, the project proposed digital billboards along with designated spaces for events, performances and public gatherings.
The initiative, led by the Telangana State Industrial Infrastructure Corporation, received a request for proposal the same year, but little progress has been made since then.
For planners, the major concern remains unchanged. As Hyderabad expands and undergoes administrative restructuring, he says accessible, safe and inclusive public spaces should become a central priority. “The government doesn’t necessarily have to fund everything, but it has to act as an enabler. It should work with private players to plan and build spaces that are truly open and usable,” says Narayan.
