Our proposal aims to create a ‘living laboratory’ in Kachipedu village, just south of the Rajiv Gandhi Memorial in Sriperumbudur, to see if using sustainable technologies and practices for building community gardens, reviving water bodies and creating common recreational areas will help identify the potential for new forms of livelihood and income. Much of this will involve community gardening efforts to create organic produce (vegetables and greens), mostly for self-consumption but eventually for marketing. Our goal is not only an economic one, but also to achieve the social end of building solidarity and reducing a growing sense of community despair (dérèglement- social disorder and tumult.