EDUCATION:
2007 MUP University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign Urbana–Champaign, United States of America
1999 BArch Birla Institute of Technology Mesra Ranchi, Jharkhand, India
Anuttama Dasgupta
Lead – Urban Practitioners' Programme | adasgupta at iihs dot ac dot in
Countries: India, USA
States: Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Jharkhand, Rajasthan, Jammu & Kashmir, Odisha, Gujarat, Karnataka
Cities: Bengaluru, Chennai, Dallas, Chicago
Languages: English, Bengali, Hindi
Anuttama Dasgupta is a built environment professional who understands the transdisciplinarity of urban practice and as Lead, UPP, is committed to developing reflective + reflexive urban practitioners across domains and sectors.
Her own capacity building (CB) and institutional development work is situated at the intersection of several sectors such as urban design and planning, transit-oriented development (TOD) and urban disaster risk resilience. Her current work in CB involves building CB frameworks for analysing and enabling systems transitions through institutional reforms and process re-engineering of government agencies involved in delivering public ‘transport as a service’. At the UPP, she has been the Course Director for programmes dedicated to Urban Social Aspects including planning, urban design, housing, and livelihoods. From 2016–21, she has designed, anchored and conducted over 200 capacity building programmes for more than 5000 urban officials from 11 states across 600 ULBs under the ICBP programme under the engineering & public health, town planning and elected representatives verticals.
Since 2016, she has designed and delivered CB programmes for a diverse set of organisations including the DoPT, DTCP, TN, CMI-xKDR, FNF, DRLA with TISS and George Washington University, GIZ, and currently, ADB-funded TOD study for BMRCL where she is the project coordinator for the capacity building component of the project. She also leads the activities of the Capacity Development Forum, IIHS’ annual CB event and is leading the institution’s efforts at building a community of practice for CB professionals.
Anuttama is an architect with a master’s degree in urban planning from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where she won the American Institute of Certified Planners (AICP) Outstanding Graduate Student Award in 2007. She has worked on site planning and architecture projects with the design wing of L&T ECC – the Engineering Research and Design Cell (EDRC). She has also worked on TOD-related urban design projects with JHP Architecture/Urban Design based in Dallas, Texas.