Urbanistica Informazioni

ECTP-CEU continues to grow – in every respect – Part 2

Scritto da M. Hedorfer.

Markus Hedorfer – UI n. 313 – gennaio-febbraio 2024 (ECTP-CEU)     

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In our previous article, published in UI 212, we had stated that during the two months before the time of writing (from mid-October to mid-December), many things happened regarding the ECTP-CEU, starting from three new members admitted during the Autumn General Assembly, held on 5th November 2023 in Gdańsk, Poland. A detailed report was provided about the Ukrainian Association of Spatial Planners (ASP-UC) and the background that had permitted to come to a quick accession process: first talks immediately after the Russian aggression; creation of their professional association in July 2022; approval (but fortunately still no ratification yet) of the controversial law No. 5655 in December 2022; talks about accession from Spring 2023; public discussion in Ukraine towards a new Building Code with ASP-UC as player from June 2023; ASP-UC, a young but skilled organisation, enters the ECTP-CEU as full member in November 2023. Last but not least, a kind of spoiler: spatial planning will be considered in every project promoted or supported by the Rebuilding Ukraine focus group of the Davos Baukultur Alliance, and ASP-UC, along with the whole ECTP-CEU, will play a key role in this. In addition to the Ukrainian planners’ association, two more valuable organisations entered the ECTP-CEU as corresponding members: the DIST of Turin, Italy and SUDA, the Georgian Spatial and Urban Development Agency.

DIST Turin, Italy

The Interuniversity Department of Regional and Urban Studies and Planning (DIST)[1] is a university department which is common to the two Turin universities: the Polytechnic and the University of Turin. Quoting from their website, its “areas of interest are spatial analysis, planning and governance; urban design and sustainable development policies for urban and rural areas; diagnostics and management of cultural, architectural and environmental heritage; human, economic and political geography; urban and environmental sociology and communication; spatial survey and representation methods; history and conservation of urban and rural architecture; transport and logistics planning; technical and economic feasibility of spatial transformation plans”[2].

The first contacts between ECTP-CEU and DIST date back about two years ago and were initially inspired by a research work done at the DIST a couple of years earlier about the spatial planning profession in Italy and Europe[3]. During talks in early 2022 both sides expressed the desire to strive for a mutual co-operation, that would have involved DIST’s corresponding membership in the ECTP-CEU on one side and, on the other side, ECTP-CEU’s membership in DIST’s Club of Institutions, Bodies, Enterprises and Organisations, an advisory body to assess the planning school’s educational offer.

In addition, the DIST was involved de facto in ECTP-CEU’s Young Planners’ Workshop since its 11th edition in 2022. For this activity no formal approval or action was necessary from either side since participation of university professors in the workshop’s assessment body is on an individual basis.

ECTP-CEU’s membership in the Turin Club was administratively speaking a simple procedure since it was just a matter of exchanging a few letters — formal invitation by the DIST followed by a positive response from ECTP-CEU’s Executive Committee — and finally the vote by the then members during the Club’s meeting of 1st June 2022, in which the ECTP-CEU could already participate and contribute to the discussion. Along with the ECTP-CEU, also METREX, the network of European metropolitan regions and areas, was admitted as a new member. The 25 then existing members were composed of several local administrations and agencies, professional, cultural, business and industry associations as well as private companies. With ECTP-CEU, METREX and now[4] also the Italian National Association of Town, Spatial and Environmental Planners (ASSURB), the Turin Club, which was established in late 2001 following the Bologna Reform and the creation of the Turin planning school, has reached 28 members. Its number and composition are an indicator of the importance of this advisory body whose network contributes also in a significant manner to internship and job placement. Among the Italian planning schools, it represents one of the most effective solutions to comply with the national legislation requiring that the universities’ educational regulations must be approved only “after consultation with the organisations representing the world of production, services and professions”[5].

DISTS’s corresponding membership in the ECTP-CEU was a somewhat more complex task since candidate members must express their willingness to sign ECTP-CEU’s founding charter[6] and pay an annual fee. This involved discussion and approval by DIST’s department council and, considering that it is a public body, this took some time. On the other hand, ECTP-CEU and DIST considered their co-operation as strategically important, especially regarding professional education, characterisation and recognition, which is key to the ECTP-CEU and where the DIST has already gained relevant experience through research works and will probably be able to further expand it also in the future.

The final version of the compiled application form was signed on 29th September 2023 and submitted to ECTP-CEU’s secretariat three days later. The application was discussed during the Executive Committee meeting of 3rd-4th October recommending its approval to the General Assembly, held on 5th November in Gdańsk, Poland. After an interesting presentation of the department by Claudia Cassatella, the delegates voted unanimously in favour of DIST’s accession to the ECTP-CEU as corresponding member.

SUDA of Georgia

The Spatial and Urban Development Agency (SUDA)[7] is a so-called legal entity of public law (LEPL)[8], i.e., a public body. It has been created in June 2022 by a ministerial order[9] after the competencies in spatial and urban development had been transferred six weeks earlier from the Ministry of Regional Development and Infrastructure to the Ministry of Economy and Sustainable Development through an amendment to the 2018 Code of Spatial Planning, Architectural and Construction Activities. As stated in SUDA’s application to become an ECTP-CEU corresponding member, its “main function is to co-ordinate the spatial and urban development policy of the country. The main pillars of SUDA’s work are […]:

  • Produce and implement the National Spatial Development Plan of Georgia;
  • Assist local municipalities to coordinate their land use master plans;
  • Harmonise current relevant legislation with the OECD best practices;
  • Increase awareness about the benefits and necessity of spatial/urban planning and its everlasting effect on climate change and sustainable development of the country;
  • Strengthen co-operation between state, academic and private agencies around spatial and urban planning.”

In early 2023, SUDA sought contact with the European spatial planners’ community, initially writing to the RTPI, which accounts for 60% of the total number of individual members in the ECTP-CEU and is therefore Europe’s largest organisation in terms of membership. The RTPI wrote back suggesting to directly ask the ECTP-CEU for information about a possible membership, which they did very shortly. On 30th March 2023, our secretariat received a first letter from Mr. Ioane Menabde, Head of SUDA, which was followed by an e-mail conversation and finally an online meeting on 23rd June where an in-depth discussion about spatial planning and planners in Georgia took place. An extraordinary aspect of this discussion was to hear that the Georgian government, unlike many other national governments, is very interested in strengthening spatial planning in the country recognising its strategic and value-adding role in any spatial development. Given the nature of SUDA as a state agency, it was immediately clear that SUDA’s role in the ECTP-CEU would be that of a corresponding member.

During the discussion, parallels with Ukraine were inevitably pointed out. For instance, the emancipation process of the spatial profession is in both countries at a similar stage: still not recognised as a completely independent profession with its own educational (university) pathway. But, while in Ukraine a spatial planners’ association had already been created and was at the time of the discussion in the process of preparing its application for full membership in the ECTP-CEU, in Georgia no such association existed yet. However, SUDA offered its help in working towards the creation of a national spatial planners’ association in the near future. SUDA proposed also to act as a reference organisation for creating professional connections to the other two South Caucasian countries. All these elements were encouraging and it was suggested to draft their application for corresponding membership as soon as possible to be submitted for vote at the next General Assembly on 5th November 2023.

This was done immediately and ECTP-CEU’s secretariat received the compiled and signed application on 14th July. It has then been discussed during the Executive Committee meeting of 18th July recommending its approval to the General Assembly, which was unanimous.

The next steps are putting in practice the ideas and proposals drafted during the pre-accession discussions and, upon express request of SUDA, working out best practice recommendations for spatial planning in Georgia.

Autumn General Assembly

As can be seen from the previous chapters of this article, including its first part published in UI 312, the 2023 Autumn General Assembly was one of the most successful ECTP-CEU assemblies in recent years. This is certainly true considering the number of new members: three, and all three with high expectations from both sides. But those who had the opportunity to attend the meeting will certainly agree that even the merely administrative matters, treated as usual in the assembly’s first part in the morning, lead to very interesting and constructive discussions. But it was also the first time that the participants of the Young Planners’ Workshop had the opportunity to attend the Policy and Project part of the agenda in the afternoon. This included the reports from the working groups and, above all, the workshop part which this times focussed on three topics: transformation of large-scale housing estates over the last 30 years in Czechia, East Germany and Poland (presented and led by Izabela Mironowicz from the Gdańsk Polytechnic University), “intensity to density” from the perspective of the UK (Richard Blyth, RTPI) and social and digital innovation in social housing districts within the “ProLight” EU project (Irene Bertolami). After the three presentations, the present delegates, guests and young planners were divided into focus groups to discuss the different topics. An online focus group was also created for those who attended via video conference. The outcomes of the discussions were then reported back to the plenary assembly. These short — less than two hours — but effective and much appreciated workshop parts are recurring elements of every ECTP-CEU’s General Assembly since the 2022 Spring Assembly in Bergen, Norway. The next workshop, to be held during the 2024 Spring Assembly on 21st April in Naples, Italy will deal with case studies related to “circularity in planning decision-making” and the outcomes will be reported as ECTP-CEU’s contribution to the next plenary meeting of the Davos Baukultur Alliance (DBA), to be held in June in Geneva, Switzerland. The DBA is linked to the World Economic Forum and represents one of ECTP-CEU’s new fields of international activity. We reported about this already in UI 308.

Note

  1. Official English name of the department, although not an exact translation. The abbreviation “DIST” refers to its Italian name “Dipartimento Interateneo di Scienze, Progetto e Politiche del Territorio” and is used also in English.
  2. https://www.dist.polito.it/il_dipartimento. Translation from the Italian by Markus Hedorfer.
  3. Federica Bonavero and Claudia Cassatella (2020). The Italian spatial planner: data insights on education and practice in an international perspective. TRIA – Territorio della ricerca su insediamenti e ambiente, 13(2), 99-112. Article in Italian with summary in English. Other publications about the same topic and with partially updated information have been published subsequently.
  4. After the latest Club meeting of 20th February 2024.
  5. Article 11, number 4, Decree of the Minister of Education, University and Scientific Research No. 270 of 22nd October 2004.
  6. https://ectp-ceu.eu/about-us/complete-charter.
  7. Official name and abbreviation in English. Full name in Georgian is სივრცითი და ქალაქთმშენებლობითი განვითარების სააგენტო.
  8. Official name and abbreviation in English. Full name in Georgian is საჯარო სამართლის იურიდიული პირი.
  9. Ministry of Economy and Sustainable Development, Order No. 1-1/249 of 9th June 2022.