| Abstract: |
Rapid, unplanned urbanization across the National Capital Region (NCR) of India has intensified environmental stress, prompting renewed scholarly and policy interest in urban garden landscaping as a nature-based instrument for hazard mitigation. This review paper synthesizes and critically re-examines the accumulated body of past work on the evaluation of urban garden landscaping and the management of environmental hazards within the NCR, integrating findings through a structured meta-analytic lens. Drawing on peer-reviewed studies, technical reports, and remote-sensing investigations published over the past two decades, the paper consolidates evidence concerning the influence of designed green spaces on the urban heat island effect, particulate and gaseous air pollution, stormwater regulation, biodiversity retention, and community well-being. Pooled analyses of reported effect estimates reveal significant, albeit heterogeneous, cooling and pollutant-attenuation benefits associated with well-designed landscaping interventions; persistence of methodological fragmentation across studies in how these develops benefits are measured. The review categorizes previous scholarship into thematic streams, assesses the merits and shortcomings of leading assessment frameworks, and highlights ongoing gaps in knowledge including poorly defined baselines, limited long-duration monitoring efforts, weak socio-economic integration and insufficient consideration of maintenance and irrigation water demand in water-scarce environments. Publication bias and spatial clustering of studies around Delhi instead of peripheral districts, further illustrated in the meta-analytic synthesis. The paper concludes that urban garden landscaping constitutes a cost-effective, scalable adjunct to grey infrastructure for environmental hazard management in the NCR, provided that evaluation is standardized, longitudinal, and coupled with governance reform. Directions for future research, including harmonized indicators and climate-resilient planting palettes, are proposed. |
