Territorial transformations and the right to the city: pedagogical challenges and regional collaboration in postgraduate education

Abstract

The article reflects on the methodological and pedagogical transformations of postgraduate higher education in urban studies in the post-pandemic era, in light of the experience of the Program of Updating in Territorial Transformations and Right to the City of the Faculty of Architecture, Design, and Urbanism of the University of Buenos Aires. Through a qualitative approach based on review of the pedagogical experiences and a of classroom practices, it examines how the incorporation of hybrid and distance learning modalities allows the classroom to be redefined as a space for the co-construction of knowledge, in a sense that territorially expands previous experiences. It highlights the methodological importance of identifying specific territorial processes and addressing interventions from the perspective of intersectional urbanization, visible the overlaps of class, gender, and race. The paper critically exposes how the fragmentary and reductionist approach of urban studies—remanent in undergraduate programs but worsened in postgraduate specializations—disarticulates the understanding of the territory, proposing the adoption of a multidimensional and multiscale analytical matrix as an epistemological alternative. Furthermore, it analyzes the pedagogical device of the integrative workshop, designed to connect a territorial process with the formulation of guidelines for physical and social transformation in contexts of exclusion. The reflections explain how the new modalities constitute a possibility that favors the integration of experiences from various territories, consolidating a space of regional interaction that provides operational tools guided by the conceptual and action-oriented horizon of the right to the city.