Reclaiming Urbanism (despite everything…)

Abstract

This article aims to reflect on the social significance of Urbanism and claims for its necessary renewal; it is written based on the author’s investiture speech as Honorary Doctorate from the UPV (Polytechnic University of Valencia) last spring. After trying to define its disciplinary nature and point out its origins and own ways of approaching its object of study and intervention, Urbanism’s material incidence in our cities and territories is confirmed through urban
history, as its indisputable cultural, political, economic and social importance. Changes in productive processes and technological advances that have occurred since the economic crisis of the mid-1970s and during the globalisation process are the main reasons for the emergence of a new city model, of new territorial dynamics and new social behaviours, with relevant consequences in the use and configuration of urban and territorial space - aggravated by the recent pandemic. These trends characterize the current situation, question some of the traditional principles of the discipline and frame the present crisis of Urbanism. This brings up the current need to rethink our discipline from the diversity of situations, the growing complexity of the processes and the uncertainty of the future, within the framework of a well-understood transdisciplinary, but without abandoning or undervaluing the relevant physical dimension of Urbanism.
Finally, some of the main current issues for its renewal are pointed out, as an instrument of government and
rational and democratic administration of the city and the territory, for the positive progress of our society.