PhD Student

Chaitali Wyomesh Dighe M.Sc.

Dept. 15: Architecture

Section Urban Planning, Subject Area Spatial and Infrastructure Planning

Contact

work +49 6151 16-57576

Work S4|24 109
Dolivostraße 15
64293 Darmstadt

Research Interests

Resilience, Smart Cities, Social Innovation, Informality

PhD Project

Evaluating the relationship between Smart City initiatives and social dimensions (working title)


Poster (opens in new tab)


By its virtue of being a theme-in-action, resilience is expected to be the foundation of urban development now and in the future. In an urban setting, infrastructure forms the backbone of development and hence it is essential to identify and develop critical infrastructures to be resilient and prepared for emergency situations. With urbanization occurring rapidly and being an irreversible process, cities need to be the prime focus for intervention. The Smart City concept has attracted world interest and has been a topic of discussion of the current decade. With its association to ICT and the debate around its benefits and drawbacks, this thesis aims to study the evidence of social influence on technological infrastructures and vice versa through the Smart City initiatives in India and Singapore. It aims to study the role of contextual specificity in the formulation of their agendas and strategies along with testing the ‘digital readiness’ of the communities. A case-study based approach will be adopted to study and analyse the different approaches chosen by the two nations to achieve their social, economic and environmental goals. The results of the study aim to promote 'socially induced innovation' as a pillar to develop critical (technological) infrastructure.

Master of Urban Planning (Singapore)
Bachelor of Architecture (India)
2016 – 2019 Research Assistant at National University of Singapore
2013 – 2014 Architect and Planner at Adytum Designs, India
2012 – 2013 Landscape Architect at KDP Associates, India

Mundus Urbano course on ‘Smart City 2.0: Shifting the focus from Infrastructure to People’ (SoSe2020) at TU Darmstadt Department of Architecture

Designing Resilience in Asia Research Programme (DRIA)

2019: “Designing Long-life Cities. How can we design resilience and resilient cities to miti gate and adapt to the impacts of climate change? Can we design the unpredictable? Can we plan with uncertainty? “In CUBES Magazine Issue 94. Singapore. 2019. ISSN: 6385-9033. Co-author: Oscar Carracedo Garcia-Villalba.

Council of Architecture, India (since 2013)