Priyanka Salunkhe is an architect and urbanist whose work lies at the intersection of design, infrastructure, and spatial justice. Before joining MIT, she worked in Bengaluru, India, where she founded Durasti (meaning “repair” in Kannada), an initiative advancing community-led resilience in water-adjacent settlements through the repair of both physical infrastructure and governance systems.

Her research at MIT, guided by Professor Lawrence Vale, draws on the framework of design-politics to examine how infrastructure projects produce spatial regimes that enable powerful actors to dispossess communities and impose singular territorial logics. Positioning design as a tool for spatial justice, her work explores alternative design approaches that build on communities’ existing ways of living, accommodate diverse everyday practices, and reimagine their relationships with urban infrastructure.

She holds a Bachelor of Architecture degree from CEPT University, India, was an exchange scholar at Politecnico di Milano, Italy, and an Urban Fellow at the Indian Institute for Human Settlements (IIHS), India.

Project description:

Priyanka Salunkhe, a Master in City Planning candidate (2025–2027) at MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning, has been selected as the 2026–2027 Tata Center Fellow. Her research explores design strategies to safeguard water-adjacent communities from displacement in Bengaluru, India, as a rapidly changing climate reshapes the city’s lakes and stormwater drains.

Advisor: Prof. Lawrence Vale