Growing a green city

Have you walked behind the Town Hall lately? You might be surprised by what you see. Nestled in that dense urban area, surrounded on all sides by buildings, you can find young banana plants, bountiful bougainvillea, creepers climbing up the walls of Citadines, a robust vegetable garden, and a drip irrigation system supplying water to young fruit trees. The team behind this work say that it’s part of a movement to green the city and to ‘grow people’. And there is no better place to launch the Auroville Urban Farming (City Centre) initiative than the city’s administrative centre.

One year ago, Canadian researchers came to Auroville and conducted an assessment of the “greenness” of the city. Their perimeters for “green” expanded beyond tree or plant cover to include the human element, such as inter-cultural and inter-generational activities open to all. They determined that the area around Town Hall was the greenest area of the city. What better place to experiment with urban farming, or the process of cultivating, processing and distributing food in urban areas on a neighbourhood level. ”Though urban farming is well known and a common practice around the world, we still often have to explain it to Aurovilians,” says Ricky, a long-term volunteer and driver of the project.

The Auroville Urban Farming (City Centre) project, now one year old, aims to model integrated, sustainable urban landscaping with an emphasis on healthy food production, including TDEF (Tropical Dry Evergreen Forest) drought resistant ornamental plants, fruits and vegetables, medicinal plants and wall creepers. The team has identified four different areas within the administrative area of the city centre. Each area will model the growing capacities of the different areas in the city centre.

One area models the possibilities for a food forest and has already begun. Working in close collaboration with Jeremy, resident of the Existence Forest community, the group is establishing a food forest there, working within the distinct perimeters of growing food amongst the trees, such as limited sunlight. The dream is to establish a healthy food forest, and then invite foresters to the site to inspire and show them how to establish their own.

Another area will focus on growing food on rooftops, with a rooftop garden planned for Mitra Youth Hostel as a model. If a rooftop garden can be maintained in a building with a rotating population, it could hopefully be replicated in Auroville apartment buildings with longer-term residents. Citadines rooftop garden is also planned to start soon. This aspect of the work is progressing along the lines initiated by Auroville Collaborative.

Another area will emphasize education, utilizing the classroom space at Mitra Youth Hostel to host workshops, lectures, or demonstrations in urban farming. Although formal workshops haven’t yet begun, there have been informal tours of the gardens and participatory events for volunteers to come and plant.

A buffer zone between the habitat and administrative area, still in its nascent stages, is a green corridor that hosts a combination of ornamental, TDEF, medicinal and food plant species. There is already a well-established garden behind the SAIIER building with brinjal, beans, banana, spinach, corn, tomatoes, pineapples, hibiscus, papaya, thulasi, and more. The rest of the land is being planted in stages. This green corridor demonstrates collaboration between various groups, including the administrators of the Town Hall, Inspiration, Mitra Youth Hostel, Citadines, La Maison Des Jeunes, SAIIER and Existence. It hopes to show that with smart, integrated landscaping, one of the most populated areas of the city can also hold the densest vegetation and be the most abundant.

The team behind the project consists of individuals with varying interests and backgrounds. Riccardo, a 23-year-old Italian long-term volunteer, came to Auroville nine months ago to study Auroville’s food security for his Master’s thesis. He discovered that when the Five Year Farm Plan did not manifest, Auroville’s food security remained practically unchanged, despite efforts like Localicious that work to promote CSAs, the Farmers Market, and individualized lunch schemes. He believes that any plan for food security in Auroville must empower the individual to actively engage in their own food production. After submitting his thesis, Riccardo returned to Auroville to begin manifesting this idea, focusing for now on building coalitions, fundraising, and balancing the academic and the hands-on aspects of the project.

Also on the team is long-term developer Luigi, whose dual love for landscaping and development are now joining hands on this project. He is committed to proving the thesis that “by building a multi-layered city, we can increase the green.”

Others on the team include Senthil, who keeps communication between team members smooth and flowing, and Brian, who is starting to document and build a framework that would integrate urban farming as a parameter for future urban developments. Then there’s volunteer Roberto who takes care of the graphics and helps to build gardens, as well as Aurovilian Gino, who focuses on the educational aspect by giving tours of the gardens and workshops that focus on how food goes from seed to plate and back to seed. “And importantly, much of the project’s hands-on work, such as the installation of all of the drip-irrigation systems,” says Riccardo, “would not have been made possible without the presence of Citadines’ gardener and our dear friend Jaiakash, who is keeping up very well with all of these innovative efforts”.

Although the project is new, one of its biggest challenges so far is water and how to adequately maintain the plants. The team members have installed a drip irrigation system within the green corridor, and hope to only use collected rainwater or wastewater from the treatment systems. If they do use the wastewater, then they will ultimately need to work with the residents to address the issue of what is being put down the drain. Although the water would only be used for fruit trees, the team would work to raise awareness that the water we use in the kitchen and the bathroom will ultimately go into our food. And given there will be food growing in abundance just outside their doorstep, it also makes sense to teach residents how to cook local food, such as how to prepare banana stems and flowers.

Other challenges the team faces are similar to many Auroville start-ups: lack of human resources and lack of long-term financial sustainability. For now, they offer an open invitation to anyone who wants to bring their skills and energy to the urban farming effort. As for money, they are currently reliant on fundraising efforts such as crowd-sourcing to make ends meet.

So far the response to the work has been overwhelmingly positive. The teams in charge of each of the buildings have been supportive. The relationships established at the outset were an important part of this: “Friends first, work later,” says Riccardo. And the response from the community has also been positive, such as when 42 people showed up for a walk at the project organized by AV Green Centre. Garnering community support is not just important, it’s critical. “This is a people project,” says Riccardo. “Our goal is not only to produce food. Our goal is to show that we don’t have to rely on outside markets. That it can be both our pleasure to grow food and, if something goes wrong outside, we have the ability to supply food to ourselves. It’s about sovereignty.”

All of the food produced in the green corridor will be free for anyone to come and enjoy. This will increase the feeling of abundance and general well-being in the area. “To produce food is good, but producing an environment of wellbeing is better,” says Luigi. “We want to incorporate beauty, food growing, and an optimal use of water – basically a holistic system. We want to improve the quality of living in these areas. Ultimately it’s about finding a harmony between nature, human beings and spirit, and urban farming is one piece of a much larger research.”

To learn more about the Auroville Urban Farming (City Centre) project, please visit: http://www.avurbanfarming.blogspot.in/