Digital catalogue

Italian urban planners do much more than people think. This book reveals such grounded urban planning practices that extend far beyond any reduction of “real urban planning” to plan-making or urban design. The narrower vision of planners as plan-makers has had a dominant influence on Italian planning curricula by severely limiting the scope of what to teach. In contrast, the place-makers' urban practices detailed here open up a wide spectrum of possibilities of planning action, suggesting many ways to update the forms, themes, and teaching methods of Italian planning education. This book shows the functions played by diverse planners and their senses of strategy and action, both shaped by their education and training. By evoking and exploring these practitioners’ extended accounts, the editors sought to erase epistemological and political tensions between pragmatism and critical theory by articulating a “critical pragmatism”. This book should provoke critical and grounded discussions, both practically, pedagogically and theoretically, in the national and international scholarly and scientific community.