As part of the Pedestrian Space ‘Global URBAN HEAT Media Lab’ and network in development, we are recording our conversations with incoming collaborators around the world, as well as students pursuing academic internships related to the project.
As part of that, we recently met with Lavanya Gupta, a PhD Scholar, TISS Editor at the Regional Studies Association Blog, and Co-Editor of ‘Just Rural Futures’. As a research scholar at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, she works on cultural entrepreneurship in the rural Himalayas, as well as working to create a collaborative space and research infrastructure platform called BhuPath.
Lavanya wrote to us with interest in joining Pedestrian Space and contributing to the Global URBAN HEAT Media Lab project through advocacy and research. Lavanya is a researcher from the city who is working in the Munsiyari Himalayas. Her research area is at 6000 m in the Greater Himalayan range, overlooking the Panchachuli Mountains, where temperatures rose to 32 degrees in June amid high humidity. The mountaintops used to remain snowclad year-round. Now the market area has fans in many houses due to rising heat.
Lavanya reflects that she is from Lucknow, UP, where the city’s climate and urban heat are felt daily by pedestrians and commuters, as they see concrete development expanding in the city’s interior and extensions. She noted that “Since I am a scholar who works in rural spaces while also being situated in the city, I could help bring perspectives from both ends of the binaries.”
Visit her BhuPath Project here: https://bhupath.vercel.app/
Learn more about the Global URBAN HEAT Media Lab below: