The architect Víctor García Gil has presented a presentation within the framework of the “II Basic Level Course of Introduction to Urban Planning” which, organized by the Group of Urban Planner Architects of the Valencian Community, will take place between November 7 and 30 in different locations in community. This course aims to bring the practice of urban planning to different professionals related to it, whether due to their practice as independent professionals, employed or at the service of the Administration. The very complete program offers an overview of all the aspects involved in territorial planning, urban planning, management and urban planning discipline. A large group of people, many of them young people, have signed up for the course in response to the interest that the topic may arouse. See reel on facebook.
The presentation given by the head of urban planning at AUG-ARQUITECTOS SLP had two clearly differentiated parts: the first addressed basic concepts of urban planning and urban management, such as distribution areas, sectors, execution units, type use and homogeneous urban areas. All of these concepts have a long history in Spanish urban planning, since the reform of the Land Law of 1975 and have been enshrined by successive reforms and transposed to autonomous urban planning legislation, without excessive changes. Being concepts that must be known, it is no less true that they hide an interpretation of the function of the urban planner that, in the words of Víctor García Gil, “they attribute prophetic capacities that, of course, they do not have.” In this first part of his intervention, the architect claimed the interest of “homogeneous urban areas” (or “homogeneous urban space, for the state legislator), a tool traditionally forgotten in all planning and which is very useful to determine the average use which corresponds to the endowment lands integrated into it to which the urban planning had not assigned lucrative use.
The second part of the presentation dealt with sectoral conditions, an “oceanic” field insofar as it refers to the enormous number of sectoral regulations that affect urban planning, in one way or another. Knowledge of these sectoral conditions and the standards on which they are based is, according to the speaker, essential for professionals who are dedicated to urban planning as drafters of plans or much simpler instruments, as well as for those who perform their duties as technicians. municipal or even, at the service of the Administration, issuing sectoral reports. Surviving an urban planning procedure and promoting it as the author of a plan or project is an impossible task if you do not have a clear vision of the content of the sectoral regulations that condition it. Regulations that, in an increasingly overwhelming way, condition any urban activity and contribute decisively to becoming an increasingly regulated and inefficient society.