Raghav Kohli — making invisible urban systems visible, legible, and participatory
(selected work)
fig.01 — rooftop solar · trading dashboard
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fig.02 — koliwada fieldwork
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fig.03 — 250+ gatherings
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fig.04 — city-scale carbon accounting · iclei–niua
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fig.03 — boundary mesh · ambli village
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fig.05 — 30 tools in 30 days
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fig.06 — map redesign
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(about)
making invisible systems visible, legible, and participatory.
I work from inside the systems I study — energy, carbon, the street — building tools that let the people already living there read and reshape their own flows. The practice is single-minded rather than broad: one obsession, pursued through instrumentation, participatory method, and design that stays close to the ground.
(experience)
Co-founder · Perspectives2025
- Built a community platform to 1,000+ members, entirely word of mouth. Designed every touchpoint: onboarding, session frameworks, facilitation methodology.
- 5,000+ stories taught me: a billion humans, a handful of emotions. The most consistent need was finding someone going through the same thing — built the product around that insight.
- Used frontier language models throughout — moving from raw qualitative data to testable product decisions in hours.
Project Officer, Climate & Energy · ICLEI South Asia2024
- Built climate resilience action plans for 10+ South Asian cities; wrote Loss & Damage policy briefs for international climate negotiations.
- Led the Urban95 Child-Friendly Cities assessment in Udaipur — ethnographic fieldwork with children and caregivers, translated into spatial design recommendations.
Climate Fellow · NIUA / MoHUA India2023
- Co-authored State of Cities — national policy report across 15+ Indian cities, published by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs.
- Built a Nature-based Solutions Toolkit of community micro-interventions — adopted by urban local bodies across India.
Urban Design Consultant · CCBA Designs2021
- Designed pedestrian connectivity and last-mile access for Pune Metro station interfaces — turning infrastructure constraints into human-scale spatial experience.
(education)
Bachelor of Urban Design · CEPT University2017–2022
- Student Excellence Award — Living Heritage: a community co-design process with residents who had never been asked what they wanted.
- Reverse Effekt — five months embedded across 12 Koliwada fishing communities in Mumbai, surfacing invisible territorial systems through storytelling and deep listening.
(skills)
researchethnographic fieldwork · cultural probing · in-depth interviews · participatory design · contextual inquiry · survey design
synthesisqualitative insight → action · insight frameworks · policy brief writing · stakeholder storytelling
computationparametric & generative design · ArcGIS · Python · R · Tableau · Rhino · Grasshopper · spatial analysis · ML fundamentals
ai & toolsdaily hands-on frontier AI models · built AI products from scratch · Figma · IBM Data Science certified
humanStanford GSB interpersonal dynamics intensive · facilitation design · deep listening · behaviour change
(additional)
certificationsIBM Data Science · ESRI GIS for Climate Action · Computational Design Workshop, UPenn
recognitionUrban design competition wins — Blankspace, Project Platypus, Gaudi · Big O’s installation, International Literature Festival Ahmedabad
leadershipFounded Urban Informal Talk Series · G20 Urban-20 Forum contributor
(index)
the fuller archive — hover a line to preview
08
teaching
design studio · participatory method
2021—now
09
writing
essays & field notes
2018—now
10
talks
lectures & panels
2020—now
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open data
datasets & released tools
2022—now
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earlier work
selected · pre-2018
—2018
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full cv
complete record · pdf
2026
fig.08 — studio critique
teaching
Studio teaching on participatory and systems-led design — running the same from-inside-the-system method with students working on their own cities.