Abstract:

During the 2023-24 academic year, a two-year PIME innovation experience, Integrated and Collaborative Vision in the core subject of Urban Planning in the Degree of Architecture of the ETSAV, was launched at the School of Architecture (ETSAV) of the Polytechnic University of Valencia. The initiative, which has involved the four compulsory subjects of the curricular block of Urban Planning and Design, arose from the interest of some professors within the structure of the Department of Urban Planning when assessing the opportunities for greater collaboration between subjects of different courses and collaborative work between groups of students of various levels.

The project is based on the following objectives:
1. To generate an integrated and global vision of town planning in a real context. To introduce, with varying degrees of depth at all levels of education, the vocabulary and current regulatory aspects of the town planning practice (which in the syllabus are acquired in the final year) to ensure learning that is coherent with professional practice and under the parameters of town planning with guarantees for the future.
2. To provide students with a proactive vision of the urban planning problems of a nearby and real territory, enriched by an agreement with local administration heads. This direct contact with the students will bring them up to date on the casuistry of their municipality and social community, enhancing their understanding of real-world urban planning issues.
3. To test the teaching results of a multidisciplinary collaboration of teachers from different areas of knowledge (architects and jurists) to reproduce the usual town planning practice.
4. To foster a spirit of collaboration among students. It encourages collaborative work between the students of the four teaching groups, one per subject. Teachers from different years can also work indistinctly with students from all levels, and students from different years can share in a common space their diagnoses and work on their strategies and intervention proposals, starting from the same territory and with the same current regulations, although with programmes of various levels of complexity.
5. To contrast, at the end, with the presentation of the student's work to politicians and the active society of the municipality, the level of agreement on the greater or lesser suitability of their proposals.

The results of this first PIME course have been satisfactory as the students have taken on board the importance of an actual regulatory framework that allowed them to work together, and they have been dealing with a precise vocabulary in addition to that of the project from the first courses.

At the same time, the joint workdays with students of different levels working together on shared planimetry and drawings have been so successful that they have asked in the student surveys to extend them in the number of days and hours for the next academic year. The meetings to present and discuss the deliveries have also been days of much interest for everyone, where teachers and students have been able to see the best results and share an atmosphere of work but also of relaxation and companionship.

Keywords:

Pedagogical innovation, urbanism, architecture, collaboration, urban project, town planning, education.