Calicut: A Healthy Food Resilient City

The liveability of a city depends on the promotion of a healthy lifestyle and living conditions. Food, being fundamental for people’s survival is essential to be in abundance and easily accessible to everyone. Due to Calicut’s rapid urbanisation and densification of the built environment, the land within the city that can be utilised for farming and agriculture purposes is now extremely limited and therefore it is being pushed further and further away from the city centre.

As a result, produces have become more expensive and less fresh, making Calicut food dependent on other states and insecure. A possible solution to this, which I have explored through the catalyst project, is incorporating urban agriculture on a city scale and residential scale.

The catalyst project is an Urban Agricultural Demonstration Centre. It provides spaces whose aim is to inform the community about the advantages of urban agriculture while providing spaces for them to get familiar with it. Targeting every age group, roof gardens, allotments, as well as vertical gardens will be available for people to plant their own crops and learn the techniques and “secrets” behind urban farming. The Centre aims to motivate everyone to add farming into their everyday routines and change their mentalities while teaching them the significance and benefits urban agriculture brings to society, the economy, the environment and most importantly to themselves.