Summary

In the last few decades, cities across the world have undergone dramatic transformations. UNDESA (2018) predicts that by 2050, 68% of the global population will live in urban areas and 90% of this increase is projected to take place in Asia and Africa. However, the reality of such urban cities is two-fold. On one hand, it is marked with increasing demand for urban services including food supplies, growing inequality, and acceleration of the mega-city problems like congestion, shrinking green spaces, increasing greenhouse gas emissions, and proliferating informal settlements (Cook et al., 2015; Padgham, Jabbour, & Dietrich, 2015). On the other hand, urban cities are also seen as sites of immense opportunity and areas that improve well-being and sustainable urbanisation by leapfrogging unsustainable trajectories (Revi & Rosenzweig 2013; Bazaz et al., 2018). This applies to the context of most Indian cities like Delhi, Pune, Bangalore, Kolkata, Chennai, and Mumbai where rapid urbanisation is associated with multiple social and environmental challenges, thereby creating a need for innovative methods of urban design that combine built form of cities, food production, and design (Ali & Srivastava, 2017; Cohen, 2006). Hence, in this study, we specifically focus on urban and peri-urban agriculture (UPA) as green infrastructure and attempt to examine the implications of agriculture on human well-being and urban sustainability in and around two cities—Bangalore and Pune.