Sneha Sumanth
I am a PhD candidate in the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies (with a collaborative specialization in the Institute of Political Economy) and work as a practicing Intern Architect in Ontario. My SSHRC and Fulbright awarded doctoral research examines plans for public housing renewal in Ottawa, Canada and New York City, USA. I study the shifting political economy and geography of publicly provided housing, and its transformations under urban renewal through public and private finance. In doing so, I foreground how tenants navigate, resist, or contest these processes that significantly affect their everyday lives and capacities for social reproduction. I argue that these state-managed processes are increasingly occupied by a logic of commodification that values profit and urban improvement over tenants’ livelihoods, and reproduces geographies of racial, gendered, and class inequality.
I have completed a bachelor’s and master’s degree at the University of Waterloo School of Architecture and have worked in the field of architecture and urbanism for five years. I am passionately involved in social and spatial justice initiatives in the communities I live in, and dedicate my endeavours to addressing deepening issues of systemic inequality.