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Home gardening practice in Pune (India), the role of communities, urban environment and the contribution to urban sustainability

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Abstract

Urban agriculture (UA) is regarded as an emerging tool and strategy for sustainable urban development as it addresses a wide array of environmental, economic and social objectives. Home gardening represents a common form of UA in the close living environments of urban dwellers that can be particularly important for rapidly growing cities and metropolitan regions in developing and transitional countries. However, a structured conceptual analysis of different urban sustainability benefits, including its operationalisation, is lacking. We therefore investigated whether and to which extent home gardening practices in urban residential environments contribute to urban sustainability. In detail, we analysed the contribution of prevailing cultivation practices, socio-economic situations, motivation, knowledge and networking of individual household and external framework conditions to the environmental, economic and socio-cultural dimensions of urban sustainability. Between January and May 2014, we conducted a questionnaire survey among 111 gardeners in residential neighbourhoods of Pune (India) and applied an analytical framework using composite indicators with index values to the compiled data. Our main results showed that sustainability benefits can be expected especially in environmental and socio-cultural aspects, particularly for urban biodiversity conservation and aesthetic green urban spaces, and less expected in economic contributions and food production. Gardening practice and sustainability contribution is rather determined by the motivation and socio-demographic factors of the gardener than type and size of the garden. We conclude that conserving and building home gardens can contribute to urban sustainability and should therefore be considered in the planning, design and management of urban spaces.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank FLOW social sciences research organisation (http://www.flowindia.org/) for their kind support to conduct the survey among home gardeners.

Funding

This work was supported by a fellowship within the Postdoc-Program of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research, Eberswalder Str. 84, 15374, Müncheberg, Germany

    Ingo Zasada, Meike Weltin & Felix Zoll

  2. Centre for Development Study and Activities (CDSA), Pune, India, Survey No. 58 & 49/4, Bavdhan Khurd, Pune, 411021, India

    Siddhartha Lawrence Benninger

Authors
  1. Ingo Zasada
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  2. Meike Weltin
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  3. Felix Zoll
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  4. Siddhartha Lawrence Benninger
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Correspondence to Ingo Zasada.

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Appendix

Appendix

Table 2 Summary statistics for garden variables (N = 108)
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Table 3 Regression Models explaining 15 urban sustainability composite indicator values (N = 100)
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Zasada, I., Weltin, M., Zoll, F. et al. Home gardening practice in Pune (India), the role of communities, urban environment and the contribution to urban sustainability. Urban Ecosyst 23, 403–417 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11252-019-00921-2

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