No abstract

The appropriateness of planning programmes in the Global South, heavily influenced by their colonial pasts and the content developed and taught in universities of the Global North, has been widely questioned. In recent years, contemporary urban challenges, as also highlightedNational Institute of Urban Affairs by the New Urban Agenda, demand that planning education step up and be a core lever of urban transformation. Grappling with legacies from the colonial past on one hand, and looking towards achieving sustainable change in future, where does planning education in post-colonial contexts currently stand? Taking seriously the intent of the programmes, this paper asks two interrelated questions of ten Master’s level planning programmes across Africa and Asia: Who is the programme intended for, and to what end? What are the various forms of knowledge the programme intends to impart, and how? This comparative, qualitative review of planning programmes from across the two regions highlights the similarities and variations in how planning and its education are viewed and approached by different institutions. With the planning discipline currently in a state of flux in post-colonial contexts, this discussion presents an opportunity for learning and innovation through South-South exchanges and partnerships—a critical, yet under-explored area for collaboration when compared with existing North–South knowledge exchange partnerships.

RESUMO Este artigo examina como e por que os educadores das universidades podem e precisam trabalhar como ‘um entre muitos’ para propor pedagogias críticas para a igualdade urbana. A discussão está embasada em duas experiências distintas: as escolas em rede da Habitat International Coalition América Latina (HIC-AL) – uma coalizão de organizações da sociedade civil, movimentos sociais e universidades que trabalham pela defesa de direitos humanos relacionados à moradia – e os processos de coaprendizagem com ativistas pelos direitos à moradia facilitados pelo Indian Institute for Human Settlements (IIHS) – uma instituição educacional nacional comprometida com a transformação igualitária, sustentável e eficiente dos assentamentos na Índia. Ambas as experiências enfatizam a criação de pedagogias críticas que procuram fundamentalmente romper, reformular e reposicionar relações institucionais de saberes e práticas de aprendizagem ao propor capacidades para uma transformação urbana transformadora. A análise demonstra como as injustiças epistêmicas – muitas vezes proliferadas em e por instituições de ensino superior – podem ser neutralizadas e porque promover a justiça epistêmica exige o reposicionamento das universidades como uma contra muitas em um ecossistema mais amplo de pedagogias urbanas, em diálogo aberto e produtivo com novas formas institucionais, definidas por Boaventura de Sousa Santos como a ‘pluriversidade’ e a ‘subversidade’.

Since 2020, pedagogues and learners in the field of urban planning and practice have rapidly responded to new demands and realities posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. These have included shifting the modes and sites of learning from classrooms to screens, developing new programmes to build urgently required local capacities, fostering partnerships and platforms that sustain remote ways of learning together, and facilitating multi-sensorial and inclusive learning practices. This plurality of pedagogic adaptation and innovation suggests complex and nuanced relations with urban (in)equality, going beyond the dominant narrative of the digital divide and distributive inequalities in higher education. This article reflects on three experiences of critical pedagogies undertaken by researchers and activists, social movements and organised civil society from India, Brazil and Argentina. As the impacts of the pandemic on the nexus between urban practice and pedagogy unfold, we argue that these reflexions-in-action on decisions made, along with their underlying principles, are important stimuli for pluralising questions of what, where, with whom and how we learn to respond to urban inequalities. Moreover, they open nuanced discussions to strategically reimagine future hybrid learning trajectories to support pathways to urban equality.