Tithi Sanyal

Cultivating Urbanism: The Agroecological Landscape of the Post-Industrial Shrinking City of Detroit. 

Tithi Sanyal is an architectural designer and an urban design researcher. Her doctoral research is on the topic, Cultivating Urbanism: The Agroecological Landscape of the Post-Industrial Shrinking City of Detroit. Her dissertation will theorize the evolving role of Urban Design in reforming a post-industrial shrinking city, using Agroecology- the science, practice, and movement of conservative agriculture. The dissertation seeks to build a thick description and mapping that engages with multiple urban narratives and forces including- social, economic, environmental, and public health, that inform urban agricultural planning within the City of Detroit. The research involves analyses of emerging strategies and current practices in urban agriculture in Detroit to reveal the social and ecological effects of these practices on the Great Lakes Megaregion. These socio-ecological effects of urban agriculture inform current and prospective master planning and urban design efforts, environmental and economic value restoration of vacant lands, real-estate development, prospective amendments to the Urban Agriculture Ordinance (2013), and food access-related policymaking in the City of Detroit.

Sanyal earned her Master of Architecture from Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and a Bachelor of Architecture with Honors from NMIMS Balwant Sheth School of Architecture, Mumbai. She was previously a Research Associate at RVTR, a research-based practice at the University of Michigan. At RVTR, she had undertaken  design research on sponsored projects examining the applications of complex systems theory to urban design, focused on increasing urban access and the food-energy-water nexus. Before moving to the United States, she was a Junior Designer at Anukruti, a non-profit organization developing community play spaces in informal settlements of Mumbai. Her design-research work is published in Architecture_MPS (UCL Press, 2023); Towards Fossil Free Cities (Cleaner Environmental Systems 4,2022); TransFEWmation: Towards Design-led Food-Energy-Water Systems for Future Urbanization (Springer, 2021); Plat 8.0 (2019); and Agora (vol 12, 2018). She has presented internationally at conferences on Architecture, Urban Design, Urbanism, and Interdisciplinary Research.