Ashali Bhandari

Ashali Bhandari is the Managing Director for Transitions Research’s People’s Urban Living Lab (PULL). Her work focuses on accelerating inclusive and transformative climate action in India’s mid-sized, rapidly growing cities. She is a geographer and urbanist whose approach to planning combines community and participatory engagement methods with rigorous data and spatial analysis. In the past, she has pursued her interest in the intersectionality of climate change, women’s access to urban spaces and informal livelihoods through her work in cities in India and Bangladesh. She has a Master’s degree in City and Regional Planning from the School of Design at the University of Pennsylvania and a Bachelor’s degree in Geography from Middlebury College.

Climate Visuals Countdown, Creative Commons, CC BY-NC-ND 4
No Woman Left Behind: Shedding Light On Gender Equity in India’s Low-Carbon Transition
Despite near universal access to electricity, gendered inequities in electricity usage hinder India’s progress on sustainable development goals. As energy policy focuses on renewable energy, socio-cultural shifts must also be prioritised to improve women’s agency over electricity use.
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Beyond Global Visions: Local Imaginaries for Indian Cities
Instead of envisioning “world-class” futures for India’s cities, we need a new imagination for equitable, climate resilient and low carbon urbanisation.
Building a Net Zero Society
Building a Net Zero Society
Our recent Talking About Transitions Dialogue, Building a Net Zero Society, unpacked the importance of social transformations to achieve a low carbon transitions in Indian cities. How can we leverage behaviour change, equitable urban planning and innovative planning approaches to create an equitable net zero future?
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Power and Politics: Reframing Urban Nature-based Solutions from the Bottom-Up
Nature in South Asian cities is highly contested: cities must incorporate community visions, indigenous knowledge and local uses of nature in cities to achieve climate and development goals.
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Behaviour change and climate action
Policymakers must recognise behavior change as an important tool to inform climate policies and communication, and enable individual climate action.
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Too hot to deliver
Platform companies, governments, and regulatory bodies must work together to effectively address heat stress for vulnerable communities like delivery workers in Indian cities.
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The City as a Laboratory - Urban Living Labs for Resilience Planning
Why are Urban Living Labs emerging as an approach to enable climate action? This blog highlights insights and knowledge that emerged from our dialogue on Urban Living Labs in 2022.
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Climate Adaptation in Resilient Cities: Explorations in South Asia
Transitions Research and Forum for the Future organised a workshop at the Global Gobeshona Conference in March 2022 to explore how scenarios of different climate adaptation strategies could transpire.
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How can Indian cities achieve net-zero emissions?
India’s rapid urbanisation, limited governance capacities and lack of climate-friendly policies hinder its path to carbon neutrality. Here’s how this can change
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A city on a marsh: Why Indian coastal cities need to design and build with nature
Recent construction and urban expansion in Panaji have exacerbated the city’s risk to floods. On World Water Day, this commentary stresses on the importance of living within the ecosystem and promoting nature-based solutions in urban development.