Tithi Sanyal is an architectural designer and an urban design researcher pursuing a Ph.D. in the Constructed Environments at the University of Virginia. Her research focuses on Cultivating Urbanism: The landscape of local food systems in the post-industrial City of Detroit. Situated at the intersection of Tactical Urbanism, Landscape Urbanism, and Agroecology, her research examines and theorizes the evolving role of urban design in shaping local food system reforms in a post-industrial shrinking city.

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 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 has 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, Sanyal was a Junior Designer at Anukruti, a non-profit organization developing community play spaces in the slums of Mumbai. Her work on community play culminated in an exhibition, Mumbai Lets Play: Children as Creator of Informal Playspaces, exhibited at Studio X Mumbai (a Columbia GSAPP initiative).

Sanyal’s design-research work is published in Towards Fossil Free Cities (Cleaner Environmental Systems 4,2022), TransFEWmation: Towards Design-led Food-Energy-Water Systems for Future Urbanization (Springer, 2021), Polyvalent Play (Plat 8.0, 2019), Chawls and Slums of Mumbai (Agora vol 12, 2018).