Jiya Benni

Background

About Jiya Benni

Jiya Benni is an urban designer, planner and architect passionate about creating equitable, sustainable, and climate-resilient cities. Jiya holds a Master’s in Urbanism from TU Delft, The Netherlands and a Bachelor’s in Architecture from the University of Kerala, India and has worked in offices in Canada, Europe and India. She is a great believer in the power of collaborative planning and placemaking in city-building, and currently sits on the Jane’s Walk Steering Committee and on the board of Sprout, a platform that connects communities to landscape architects. She has worked on topics such as flood-resilient design and active transportation, and also on a wide variety of projects ranging from design of individual buildings to campus master plans and riverfront developments where she conducted site visits and assisted in the creation of site plans, master plans as well as schematic and technical drawings. She has strong graphic design and data visualization skills. She is an experienced researcher and has published various articles and research pieces while also writing at her blog ‘Contemplating Urban Matters’. She is also skilled at participatory planning and has engaged with different communities in Ontario for various projects. Some of the projects she has worked on include Active Neighbourhoods Canada, a project to co-create active neighbourhoods across Canada, Vision Zero Senior Safety Zones Community Facilitation, a project to gather feedback from seniors living in different Senior Safety Zones in Toronto, and Floating City Apps, a project to upgrade waterfront slums in the Global South using shipping containers on floating platforms and retrofitted with basic facilities. A big-picture thinker with a strong inclination towards strategic urban planning, she has great interpersonal skills and enjoys working in multidisciplinary teams. Having worked in different countries and cultural contexts, she is highly adaptable and a quick learner.