About
Scholar, planner, and educator working across equity, accessibility, and sustainability.
My academic and professional work is rooted in equity-oriented planning, community development, and the practical work of building institutions, tools, and pathways that expand access to opportunity.
Biography
Dr. Sowmya Balachandran is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Urban Planning and Community Development in the School for the Environment at the University of Massachusetts Boston. Her research examines the spatial, institutional, and policy conditions that shape opportunity, housing stability, transportation access, community development, and regional resilience.
Her work is informed by more than two decades of planning and community development experience across India, Mauritius, Mexico, Cuba, Bangladesh, Indonesia, and the United States. She has worked on land-use planning, zoning, post-disaster redevelopment, affordable housing, sanitation planning, transit-oriented development, and neighborhood development.
Across research, teaching, and service, she advances engaged scholarship through peer-reviewed publications, policy reports, student research, community-facing planning products, and applied tools for planners and practitioners.
Professional trajectory
A career that connects architecture, planning practice, housing innovation, community development, and academic research.
Bachelor of Architecture, Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda.
M.Tech. in Urban and Regional Planning, CEPT University.
Co-founded Alchemy Urban Systems, a planning consultancy working across land management, statutory planning, sanitation, transit-oriented development, and post-disaster reconstruction.
Co-founded DBS Affordable Home Strategy to demonstrate market-based affordable housing solutions in India.
Established Griha Pravesh, a housing facilitation center for low-income households.
Completed Ph.D. in Regional Planning at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
Visiting Assistant Professor, Florida State University.
Assistant Professor, University of North Texas.
Assistant Professor, University of Massachusetts Boston.
Architecture and planning
Planning begins with the relationship between people, buildings, institutions, and landscapes.
My professional formation began in architecture and expanded into regional planning, housing systems, community development, and spatial justice. That trajectory continues to shape how I study the built environment: as both a material system and an institutional one.