Utopia Under Construction?

Join us on 7th December for an exploration of how cities grow, why they look the way they do and how planners shape the everyday experiences of millions of people.

About the Lecture

This session makes sense of the systems behind city-making. Sharaj Sundararaman introduces the building blocks of urban planning, from master plans and zoning codes to neighbourhood plans and transportation networks.

You’ll learn how land use and mobility shape each other, how population density affects traffic and public space, and why different cities around the world grow in such different ways. The talk covers global planning models like Transit-Oriented Development, the 15-Minute City and Smart City frameworks, with real examples from India, North America and the UK.

Sharaj also demonstrates how planners use tools like GIS, Mapbox, AutoCAD and urban simulation platforms to evaluate policies and imagine futures. The session concludes with a live simulation using Cities: Skylines to show how planning decisions reshape a virtual city in real time.

About the Lecturer

Sharaj Sundararaman is a town planner with a global engineering consultancy. He has worked on master plans, zoning plans, transportation studies and urban research across India and abroad. Sharaj studied urban planning at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign and Amity University. He works at the intersection of design, policy and technology, and cares deeply about how cities feel to live in and how thoughtful planning can make everyday life more humane.

About unLecture

unLecture brings experts out of classrooms and into cafés, bars and neighbourhood spaces across Delhi. Created by three friends from St. Stephens, Delhi who wanted learning to feel warm, social and alive. unLecture turns an ordinary evening into a conversation you’ll think about long after it ends.