Aditee Prabhakar
Research Fellow
Qazaq Research Institute for Future Studies
Aditee Prabhakar, a scholar of future studies is an architect and urban planner by profession. At present, she a Research Fellow conducting studies on the exchange between the culture and city planning in Ancient Silk Road Cities at Qazaq Research Institute for Future Studies (QRIFS) at Narxoz University and a Ph.D. Scholar in the Department of Architecture, Town and Regional Planning, Indian Institute of Engineering Science and Technology, Shibpur, India. Aditee is a practicing Architect and Urban Planner. She did her graduation (Thesis Topper) in Architecture from National Institute of Technology (NIT) Patna – an institute of National Importance under the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD), Government of India. She did her Masters (Post Graduate) in Planning with specialization in Urban and Regional Planning from the Indian Institute of Engineering Science and Technology (IIEST) Shibpur – another institute of National importance under MHRD. She has worked for some of the leading Architecture Firms and has deep experience and expertise in cost-effective, vernacular and sustainable architecture and planning with a focus on the ecologically fragile areas. She is pursuing her Ph.D. at IIEST in "Systems Approach for Special Planning of Human Settlements." She has situated her Ph.D. research in the Post-Soviet Central Asian Contexts - with a special focus on modern cities that acted as important hubs on the historical Silk Road. She combines technology research methods (i.e., mathematical modeling) and management research methods (i.e., scenarios, case study research and strategic planning) to identify and apply social-political-technological-cultural-historical-environmental elements in developing her model.
Talks
Futures, Culture, and Urban Planning: Insights from research on cities across the ancient Silk Road
Urban planners create the future. And while there is a long history of collaboration between urban planning and futures studies, further attention is needed to the ways in which forward-looking approaches can broaden how cities shape the future. One area that needs further attention is the role and function of culture in planning. Often viewed as an independent variable, culture is also an often overlooked aspect of urban planning processes. In this session, we share insights from research at the intersection for future studies, culture, and urban planning within the context of Post-Soviet Central Asian cities across the ancient Silk Road. Combining historical analysis and action-learning, we outline how planning has to be a dynamic process driven by participatory approaches, which relates directly to ongoing conversations about imagining how cities can cope with crises such as the Covid19 pandemic. Aditee would be joined by Dr. John A. Sweeney, Director, Qazaq Research Institute for Future Studies, who is her co-researcher and mentor for this study. This is a joint study conducted by scholars from Qazaq research Institute for Future Studies (QRIFS), Narxoz University, Almaty, Kazakhstan and Indian Indian Institute of Engineering Science and Technology (IIEST), Shibpur, India.
