Chennai Resilience Strategy launched in June 2019 identified urban horticulture as a flagship project – specifically as an action that will support Chennai in urbanising more responsibly as a green and inclusive city. Multi-stakeholder consultations over a year highlighted the potential of a well-planned and executed urban horticulture initiative to address Chennai’s varied socio-economic (e.g. food security, lack of livelihood options for the poor, solid waste management) and ecological challenges (e.g. loss of green cover, risks associated with climate change and disasters). With specific interest to ensure that an urban horticulture initiative may truly benefit the city’s vulnerable communities, Chennai Resilience Centre (CRC) wishes to further explore the potential of such an initiative as a “Green Livelihood Program” offering viable job opportunities for the urban poor.
While the proposition to introduce green spaces and greening/farming activities in Chennai’s informal settlements and resettlement colonies has already been made (GCC’s Plantation Strategy and WaL), no assessment of the feasibility of introducing urban farming effort in such areas have been conducted. As such this scoping study is undertaken to understand the viability of introducing an urban horticulture initiative in Perumbakkam, one of Chennai’s largest resettlement colonies located in neighboring Chengalpattu District. Learnings from the Perumbakkam case can be useful in assessing some of the common limitations as well as opportunities that other low-income neighbourhoods in Chennai are likely to present.
Kalpana Manivanan