Planning for Urban Transitions

ended

Spatial planning education constantly seeks new methods and tools to produce a deeper knowledge of territorial, urban, and social phenomena by involving students through practical exercises on complex spatial problems. This approach is intended to prepare future professionals in dealing with the challenges they will encounter in their daily lives. The need to strengthen and adjust the teaching content in planning is also recognized by the New Urban Agenda and the UN Sustainable Development Goals in the light of the EU policy priorities. The programme In:Transition on planning for transitions allows students to examine phenomena attributed to a wide urban/regional domain, such as gentrification, the use of public spaces, multiculturalism, pervasive neoliberal urban developments and their effects, policies for migrants and minorities, the effects of zoning mechanisms, the role of place-based interventions, urban/rural synergies, biodiversity loss, etc. This form of learning experience contributes to the professional responsibility of future urban planners by enhancing their role in the field of law, negotiation, and mediation. To assume the urgency of creating a transition pathway and to consolidate that change implies that planning should frame the process and, above all, create a vision and prepare the future. Having reached this stage, we believe that the desired sustainability in the protection of the environment, the promotion of the economy, employment, and wealth and the defense of social and spatial justice is much closer. It is for all these reasons that this EMDM proposal for the creation of a EMJM makes, in our understanding, a lot of sense for the European context and beyond, namely by taking advantage of the excellence of the three HEI involved. The future EMJM programme includes the extra-European context, such as the Global South, with specific challenges of a diverse nature, and where innovative methodologies are urgent.