Sudeshna Chatterjee is the Program Director for Sustainable Cities and Transport at WRI India. Sudeshna’s work at WRI focuses on overseeing and participating in high-quality research and publications across diverse strands of work within sustainable cities and transport including urban resilience, transit-oriented development (TOD), public transport, public space, land development, air pollution, electric mobility, hydrogen, economic geography, and India’s urbanization trends. She also undertakes some independent research.

Sudeshna brings nearly twenty years of experience as an urbanist, urban planner, designer, researcher, evaluator, and educator. She has always seen her role as a bridge-builder between the communities of knowledge and practice intersecting research (evidence generation and evaluation), planning (evidence-based planning and design of built environments for people and environment-friendly cities), teaching, and capacity-building. Sudeshna has mapped, monitored, and evaluated complex urban policies and programs across the world and served as international research lead on multi-country projects that included countries such as Bangladesh, Belize, Brazil, India, Japan, Lebanon, Nepal, Philippines, Spain, Sweden, Syria, Thailand, Turkey, USA, and Vietnam. Sudeshna co-led the first corporate evaluation of UNICEF’s Work on Children in Cities for UNICEF Headquarters, New York, by mapping UNICEF’s urban programming in 72 countries and conducting detailed case studies of different models that are representative of best practices of key urban programming approaches. Most recently, Sudeshna led the UN system-wide effort for developing Global Principles and Guidance on Public Space for Children as an international consultant to UNICEF, WHO, and UN-Habitat.

Sudeshna has successfully built and ran a non-profit organization as well as managed a design and planning practice while offering her services as an international consultant. Besides research, she has led large-scale urban planning and design projects with a strong focus on inclusion and sustainability. She wrote the urban design guidelines for a new greenfield capital city in India, Naya Raipur, and worked with multiple stakeholders including local urban development authorities to build consensus, secure approval, and build capacity on urban planning and design to deliver on the vision of a caring, inclusive city. She has also worked on citywide street improvement projects as well as multi-modal integration around metro stations in New Delhi.

Sudeshna holds a Ph.D. in Community and Environmental Design from North Carolina State University, USA, a master’s in Urban Design from the School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi, and a bachelor’s in Architecture from Jadavpur University, Kolkata. She has authored books, articles, policy briefs, development reports, editorials, blogs on topics related to equity and inclusion; urbanization, planning, and the environment; urban governance; urban childhoods and child-friendly cities; public space, adequate housing, and slum upgrading; community and child-centered climate adaption, coping and resilience. Sudeshna is a sought-after keynote speaker on urban issues and has lectured widely in the United States, United Kingdom, Japan, Sweden, and several other European countries. She serves on the editorial board of the Journal of e-Planning Research and the international journal of Children, Youth, and Environments. She is also a member of the global executive board of the International Play Association.

A staunch advocate of children’s rights and a good listener, Sudeshna loves traveling, cinema, eclectic cuisine, and a good book to curl up within a well-lit corner with a green view. She lives in New Delhi with her husband and son.