Remembering Aditi

As Nagariyal prepares to officially launch this week, we fondly remember our dear friend Aditi Subramanian, one of the founding members of Project Nagariyal in 2021.

Project Nagariyal was an idea born during morning cycle ride conversations in Chennai between Aditi, Santhosh, and Achuthan. At that point, it was meant to be a fun weekend project of travelling to cities across India and documenting best practices in street transformation, and using it as an excuse to indulge in the local street food.

One of the many cycle rides in January 2021 during which the idea of Project Nagariyal was born. Image source: Santhosh Loganaathan.

Our first site was going to be the Sweet Meat Street (SM Street) in Kozhikode, Kerala. But a week before the trip was due, the second wave of COVID intensified, inter-city travel was restricted, and we had to cancel our plans. With other personal and career priorities, Project Nagariyal never took off that year and for years after, but lived on as a Whatsapp group and in scattered conversations among us; until it slowly found its way back in 2026 as something larger than we had originally set out for: an organisation for urban research and action. Trained at Anna University and UC Berkeley, Aditi was an architect and urban designer who championed building inclusive and sustainable cities through a people-first lens. A deep empath, she approached design by putting herself in others’ shoes and thinking about urban spaces from a first-person perspective — a trait that made her work much more real and impactful.

As part of her thesis for the Masters in Urban Design programme at UC Berkeley, Aditi proposed an urban framework for adaptability to address climate gentrification in Little Haiti, Miami. Image source: Aditi Subramanian.

During her time at the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP) India, Aditi helped develop a stakeholder engagement toolkit, drawing on her vast experience in building the capacity of Indian city officials to involve citizens in walking and cycling projects. She was commited to ensuring meaningful stakeholder participation even in the US, while working with Perkins & Will Atlanta. As part of the core team of the multiple award-winning Clarkston Greenway project — situated in one of the most culturally diverse square miles in US and home to residents from many countries speaking over 50 languages — she designed and led fun, creative, participatory public consultations that brought the project directly to the community.

Aditi with a community member at the public consultation event for the Clarkston Greenway project. Image source: Clarkson Greenway Study.

Aditi cared deeply about how young women perceived and experienced public spaces. She spent time with teen and adolescent girls and listened to their stories through focus group discussions, as part of her 2024 research project, Girls Just Wanna Have Fun — a work that went on to inspire many others. Aditi's contributions were never loud or flashy, but they were deeply felt — making a difference in the small, everyday things that matter most. Though she may not be with us today, her light continues to guide us. And like Aditi, we at Nagariyal hope to reimagine cities as joyful places with and for people of all genders, ages, abilities, classes, and backgrounds. We miss her so much.

Aditi Subramanian (1997 - 2024)

With contributions from Vinaya Mani and Aaishwarya Jain