Urban planning as a pedagogical experience in intermediate cities in northern Peru, 2011–2016

Intermediate cities have undergone important transformations in this century and face major challenges. Local governments, however, lack sufficient skills to tackle them, favoring short-term actions in the face of planning’s inefficiency and lack of legitimacy. The Transversal project embeds into the urban planning process of smaller intermediate cities the co-production of a territorial project with the participation of local actors in a series of sequential workshops, linking research activities, academic courses, training of officials, and development of specific plans and projects. This participatory methodology links the short- and long-term urban planning in local management and leads to a reformulation of academic methodologies in urban interventions, both in the assessment of firsthand qualitative information and in harmonizing local and academic time frames. The sequential workshops constitute the backbone of planning as a pedagogical experience, questioning the academic activities’ continuity and their integration to local development.