Objectives and Contextualisation

Any human activity takes place in a physical space. This statement may seem obvious and yet we tend not to fully understand its implications. The United Nations has long recognized that the 21st century is and will be the century of cities, of urban environments where more than half of the world's population will meet. Urban environments in which one in four people lives in informal conditions, that is, in spaces that have not undergone an urbanization process (supply of basic services, such as water or energy, public facilities of education and health, access by safe, accessible and walkable streets, etc.). Urban environments that are currently responsible for 70% of CO2 emissions on a planetary scale. Urban environments that are the main focus of the challenges we have to face in the near future, and at the same time its main lever for change. Urban environments whose impact goes far beyond the recognized urban footprint.

Planning is an exercise in ordering all the elements that make up a territory. Planning that must be understood as an expression of the will of a society to organize itself in the territory it inhabits: identifying the areas to be protected or preserved for environmental, cultural, identity or economic reasons; pointing out the areas where the urban settlements meet and establishing the rules and conditions that define them; accommodating the roads, corridors and channels through which exchange flows of all kinds must occur within the system.

All these issues are the object of physical and normative planning that is specified in three modalities: regional, urban and sectoral planning.

The objectives of this course are aimed at understanding the three ways of intervening on the territory and that are specific to any exercise in spatial planning:

• Legislate - Introduce the main concepts, tools and content of spatial planning for both modalities: regional and urban (city).

• Plan - Deconstruct and analyze the process of formulation of regional and urban planning and how and by whom the decisions are taken.

• Deploy (implementation) – Understand the processes of approval and implementation of regional and urban planning in Catalonia mainly and in other European and Latin American realities, in general.

In short, this course is about understanding the reasoning for regional and urban planning, to become familiar with the basic concepts and elements that make them up and the instruments or technical tools used to shape and specify them. Delve into the implications of an apparently trivial statement that any human activity takes place in a physical space and, finally, contribute to build up criteria to the personal and individual position that we all have of what happens and affects our most immediate physical environment.

This knowledge will be achieved through theoretical classes, the preparation by the students of presentations related to current issues and topics (global agendas (SDG and Urban Agenda, deployment of the energy transition, new interventions in public space, etc.), and with a work on a practical case of planning process in a particular municipality.