Kritika Vidyashankar is an urban planner and designer whose idea of a city began at the KR flower market in Bangalore, a loud, crowded tangle of vendors, buyers, and daily ritual that taught her that public space is something people build together. That instinct led her to study urban design at CEPT University in Ahmedabad, and then to fieldwork with a Koli fishing settlement in Mumbai, where she learned to see design through the eyes of the people who live in it. She went on to earn her Master of City and Regional Planning at Cornell University.
Her work since has focused on the things that make neighborhoods run. She authored a citywide tree-planting and land stewardship Pattern Book for the City of Cleveland, analyzed vacant and underused land with GIS, and co-chaired Design Connect, Cornell’s student-led community planning organization. She’s drawn to work where a good process ends up as something a community actually uses.