This was a student project by Anuja Girme for Kristi Cheramie's course LARCH 7950 in Spring 2018.
Agriculture plays a vital role in India's economy. More than 50 percent of the rural households depend on agriculture for their means of livelihood. But post-independence, Pune, a city on Deccan plateau, underwent a frenetic transformation which projected it as one of the bustling cities in India. And thus, we see the economic and social forces within the cities bringing about rapid waves of change in the rural agricultural landscapes. A number of people employed in major agricultural occupation left their jobs for better prospects in non-agricultural occupations in each size and class of habitation.
The impacts of urbanization and industrialization, filtered through all the layers of ecology of the green belt around Pune city. This is where, our role as Landscape Architects comes into play. Landscape Architecture here lies on an intersection of Policy, Horticulture, Conservation Biology and most importantly, Agriculture.
The need of preserving the dichotomy between city and the countryside and their coexistence gives us a threshold of possibilities along the fractal edge between the two.
With this in mind, I will be designing small scale practices within the existing landscape with short term and long term strategies for a strengthened and more cohesive agricultural landscape for optimizing the usage of resources within the green belt. Some policy reinforcements with respect to previously stated plans of Planning Commission of India would be integrated within this design proposal.
This would be my attempt to conserve agriculture and to utilize it to reinvent itself in rural landscape to meet the economic needs as well as fulfill the social and environmental functions. - Anuja Girme
