URBANISTICA. PROGETTO AMBIENTALE DELLA CITTÀ E DEL TERRITORIO

Employment and professional opportunities for graduates.
Junior planner
Graduates can practice as freelancers (after passing the State Examination) for the activities envisaged in section B 'junior planners' of the Register of architects, planners, landscape architects and conservators, or for unregulated free consultancy in the field of planning and more generally in the field of research relating to territorial and environmental transformations, applied in a European context.
A three-year university graduate after registration in Section B - Planners, of the Register of Architects, Planners, Conservators and Landscape Architects, as a Junior Planner can practise his profession in the following fields:
- Responsible for technical-administrative procedures in public administration
- Freelancer
- Technical support and collaboration in professional planning activities
- Technicians with expertise in the design, implementation and management of spatial information systems for the analysis, management, evaluation and monitoring of city, territory and landscape-environment processes;
- Technical experts in the design of management and evaluation procedures for planning acts, policies, and complex programmes;
- Technical promoters of local development.
Furthermore, the target market consists of local authorities (municipalities, provinces, regions, etc.), municipalised companies, professional firms and engineering companies operating in the field of territorial, urban, landscape and environmental planning, design of territorial information systems, cartographic processing, environmental assessment and monitoring.
Pursuing studies in master's degrees is one of the employment outlets for three-year graduates.

Communication skills.
Graduates have the ability to curate an effective communication of the assumptions and aims of their design choices and interventions, knowing how to calibrate and modulate it according to the various objectives to be realised, the contexts, the audiences. The blended teaching favours for students the learning of new modes and thus skills of digital communication, as required by the challenges of the digital era.
They are therefore able to change the level of depth - but also the linguistic and lexical register - in relation to the recipient, the situation, the objectives, the interfaces.
In particular, students must know how to use argumentative structures with ease, within a framework of organising communication according to the requirements of rational argumentation, taking into account the need for public acts to be comprehensible even to laymen, and to be transparent.
These objectives are achieved by means of constant didactic and pedagogical attention aimed at strengthening the ability to motivate each choice with effective argumentative structures, to make implicit or tacit premises explicit or perceptible, to be aware of the strengths and weaknesses of positions, to know how to take on new points of view, even very different from the initial ones.
In this framework, moreover, the relationship, rich in interaction, with teachers, experts and tutors is very important, as is the relationship with fellow students in one's own and other classes, with foreign students on our campus or in other locations on Erasmus exchanges, with graduates (an open learning community), and equally important is the work of continuous critical discussion carried out in class and in the workshops. For this reason, project workshops often include in itinere and/or in conclusion critical discussion of the students' work by representatives of institutions, bodies and stakeholders in the project developed in the workshop, thus simulating a real planning and design context.
The practice of languages other than Italian and familiarity with digital languages, as well as with the different communicative registers used not only in face-to-face interaction situations, but also in virtual ones, constitutes the completion of the construction of the communication skills of the graduates, who will have to be able to confront opinions, cultures, ideologies and cultural settings different from their own, and possibly understand the nature of disagreements in order to be able to intervene fruitfully with mediation, negotiation and elimination of misunderstandings, and conflict management.

In addition to the tools indicated in the descriptors above, a constant activity will be to test communication skills, both verbal and written, as well as representational skills in examinations and in itinere tests; in particular, a part of the dissertation mark is attributed to communication skills.

Learning skills.
Graduates are able to synthesise their acquired knowledge in such a way that it forms a valid basis for further study, and are able to make independent judgements on various issues, with a knowledge or awareness of the main theoretical orientations and practices of design or planning.
In the course of their studies, they have developed a learning methodology that also enables them to undertake further studies using the skills they have acquired in a framework of increasing autonomy and conceptual and theoretical complexity. Every opportunity for professional growth naturally becomes for them also a moment of cognitive and theoretical deepening. They have the critical awareness to be able to identify, among their own experiences, those that are relevant to motivate them to continue their university education, or to understand the needs for updating and training that arise in their professional activity.
In addition to the instruments mentioned in the previous descriptors and in particular the individual interpretation and analysis tests of workshop and course material, it is the 'learning by doing' process itself, such as the numerous tests and the constant interaction with lecturers, experts and tutors, that is the decisive moment in the assessment of learning abilities.

Making judgements.
Graduates are able to make pertinent and insightful judgements on various disciplinary and transdisciplinary issues, and they do so by using the acquired knowledge in a correct and reasoned manner, showing that they are able to organise, use and adapt notions, techniques, tools and theories well, and that they are able to 'call together' knowledge according to cognitive and operational objectives influenced by the context.
The judgement they possess is open to the multiplicity of possible approaches, structured by an awareness of the complexity of the issues and far removed from a merely solution-oriented conception of the project and the plan.
The judgements typically made by graduates must be flexible and 'original' but must in any case be anchored in the fundamental ability to explore and learn about the world, so that even the formulation of a judgement is always transformed into a further heuristic and a hypothesis to be tested.
Graduates subject any judgement to their own ability to discuss and doubt, and support it with both argumentative reasoning and quantitative elaborations. It is particularly important to bring out, on every occasion, the cultural, social, philosophical, historical and technical-scientific aspects that deepen and give depth to any design issue.
These results are pursued through:
- integrated teaching modules in which the same confrontation between teachers forces students to continuously translate and compare personal and disciplinary points of view;
- project workshops inspired by complexity and interdisciplinarity;
constant didactic call for the adoption of new theoretical viewpoints and the need to provide reasoned justifications for actual and possible choices;
- interpersonal confrontation, achieved through group work and critical class discussions;
- collaborative modes supported by e-learning tools;
- cultivation of independent judgement.

In addition to the tools indicated in the descriptors above, periodic verifications will be carried out, structured and also coordinated by tutors, on themes and issues both theoretical and design, chosen autonomously by the students and interpreted by them with the methods and techniques they deem appropriate.

Knowledge and understanding.
Mathematics, informatics and statistics
The languages, concepts and basic theorems of the disciplines of linear algebra, mathematical analysis, and geometry provide the fundamental and basic knowledge for using the tools of the technical disciplines addressed in later years and for modelling urban phenomena.

Representation
Students acquire knowledge, also operative, on the basic tools for the graphic representation of cartography, also numerical; they will have to know how to filter and manage the structure of data, the levels of representation and the graphic coding of the dressing of a representative data set; use the tools of communication and graphic languages to present project solutions and planning of vast and/or local areas. In particular, they acquire: knowledge and understanding of drawing as an expressive act and visual communication of the planning idea; to know the tools of representation and communication of the plan at the different scales of operation; the graphic languages and tools to build a territorial knowledge base aimed at urban, territorial and environmental planning; the tools to elaborate numerical cartography in a GIS environment.

Architecture and engineering
The three-year urban planning graduate will havè gained basic knowledge of the evolution of urban planning thought, urban planning techniques, environmental and spatial planning, planning tools and urban and spatial and landscape policies through a continuous comparison of Italian and international experiences and case studies.
In the field of urban and spatial planning, the three-year degree student acquires knowledge of the history of the city, urban planning theory, experiences with urban and spatial planning projects, the basic requirements for the sustainability of plans and projects, and for sustainable mobility. This enables the acquisition of critical analysis skills of the phenomena and dynamics of the evolution of urban, spatial and landscape systems.
The three-year graduate will learn about the principles and ways of approaching the planning and design of space and transport systems in its role as a structural component of spatial organisation.
The graduate will acquire a particular sensitivity to and develop a special focus on certain transversal knowledge in architecture and town planning:
- the theme of sustainability and urban and environmental risks declined from an environmental, economic, social and political-institutional point of view, recalling the concepts of resilience and durability of resources, territorial and social equity in both intra- and intergenerational terms;
- the theme of the non-negotiable values of a local society, of common and collective goods, the respect and protection of which recall an ethical principle and social responsibility that can no longer be avoided;
- the theme for the inclusive space organisation project, aimed at everyone, minorities of all kinds, and fragile individuals requiring inclusive cities, spaces and services
- environmentally-oriented city and land management that involves listening to the context and involving local societies in local development processes.

Ecology, geography and geology
The disciplines within these subject areas provide the nodal elements of ecological problems in the planning and use of land and the urban environment. They also enable the analysis and interpretation of the territory through its geographical and economic-political dimensions.
Three-year graduates will have to know and understand the structure and functioning of territorial systems and in particular be able to analyse and evaluate biotic and abiotic components and soils both in structural (diversity), functional (processes) and management terms (conservation, restoration, problem-finding and problem-solving of the various environmental issues relating in particular to plant species, community aggregates). Graduates must acquire a systematic understanding of the functioning and organisation of plant living organisms as well as the structure and processes of vegetation.

Law, economics and sociology
The teachings in these subject areas provide disciplinary institutions of law, economics, sociology with the in-depth study of preparatory aspects for the training of urban planning graduates.
Within the discipline of economics, the main theories and experiences in the field of economics for the preservation of collective goods and their valorisation are presented, with particular reference to the context and design theme of the teaching block.
Within the module on law and sociology, in addition to the essential disciplinary notions, the student acquires some interpretative tools for the investigation of the social landscapes of an urban context. The ability and skills in the analysis and interpretation of the norms of law enable the graduate to build up the normative knowledge of urban law in order to elaborate real and feasible planning hypotheses.

Related or complementary educational activities
Related educational activities reinforce the degree programme and the fundamental knowledge to elaborate workshop design hypotheses. Among the disciplines, ancient typography makes explicit the settlement principle of a territory in relation to the environmental structure of the context, a fundamental knowledge to initiate a profound understanding of the historical matrices of a city. With respect to Environmental Hygiene, the three-year degree student will acquire in-depth knowledge concerning the relationship between public health and the environment, strengthening the understanding of the pivotal role played by planning itself as the main form of protection of both. The geology of the territory makes it possible to interpret the structural elements of the analysis of an environmental context and its dynamics. The epistemology of the project stimulates understanding and interactive dialogue on theoretical concepts that can be placed at the basis of a planning idea.

Applying knowledge and understanding.
Mathematics, informatics and statistics
Modelling a problem through the language and tools of mathematics enables the urban planner to acquire the ability to calculate, solve and approximate solutions to complex problems. This provides the basis for understanding the tools of the technical disciplines addressed in later years and provides the basis for modelling urban phenomena.

Representation
Students learn the knowledge necessary for the formation of a spatial analysis through the tools of graphic representation and through the layering of codified spatial information that can be processed, for example, with Geographical Information Systems. This allows them to apply both graphic and numerical techniques to propose the project idea and its implications on the environment and territory.

Architecture and engineering
The three-year urban planning graduate will be able to deal with the complexity of spatial and urban systems by applying the knowledge acquired. He/she will be able to apply approaches, techniques and tools within the project laboratories that characterise each teaching module. The interdisciplinary nature of the workshops makes it possible to gain an understanding of the complexity of urban processes and fosters the skills and application capabilities of integrated design at different scales of operation.
The didactic project of the three-year degree fosters dialogue between distinct competences that concur, in practice, in the solution of urban problems. The group work stimulated in the project workshops encourages the acquisition of methodological and design skills with which to construct hypotheses for urban transformation and regeneration. Through the design of urban space and spatial planning, also in infrastructural terms, the graduate develops a sensitivity towards the construction of conditions that improve urban and environmental quality.
The three-year graduate will learn and develop skills on the principles and methods for dealing with urban and environmental risks involving the organisation of the city and the territory. The operational confrontation with a specific study context in the context of project laboratories fosters the development of skills in the framing, interpretation and definition of action strategies and project interventions at the appropriate scales of detail.

Ecology, geography and geology
The didactic approach requires that each theoretical element corresponds to an exemplification that students must apply autonomously in project workshops. This stimulates the ability to choose and use appropriate equipment, tools and methods to detect the structural and functional diversity of the territory, to understand approaches and theories relevant to the subject under investigation; to combine theory and practice to solve problems of information acquisition as well as conservation and protection. The teaching approach envisages that each theoretical element corresponds to an exemplification that students have to apply autonomously in the project workshops. This stimulates the ability to choose and use appropriate equipment, tools and methods to detect the structural and functional diversity of the territory, to understand approaches and theories relevant to the subject under investigation; to combine theory and practice to solve problems of information acquisition as well as conservation and protection.

Law, economics and sociology
Through the knowledge acquired in this subject area, the graduate will be able to prepare an outline assessment of the social and economic feasibility of plan and project interventions, and to read and interpret the social and regulatory dynamics that may hinder, favour and integrate policies, plans and projects.

Related or complementary educational activities
The three-year degree student through related activities strengthens interdisciplinary skills to develop project ideas, make them feasible and realisable.
For this reason, the knowledge acquired will enable him/her to anticipate and/or counteract environmental problems, e.g. with clear repercussions on public health, by proposing prevention strategies proper to planning on all possible levels (primary, secondary and tertiary prevention). With respect to ancient topography, through the knowledge acquired the student will be able to initiate correct procedures for the evaluation and interpretation of current settlement landscapes; through geology he/she will be able to understand the need for coherence between the functioning of the territory and the settlement and locational dynamics of a project. Epistemology offers the graduate the opportunity to develop creative ideas that foster territorial innovation.

Language(s) of instruction/examination.
ITALIAN

Skills associated with the function
Junior planner
For all functions transversal and common competences and skills are the ability to dialogue with experts from other disciplines, to work within interdisciplinary and non-disciplinary teams.
For the performance of function A - responsible for technical-administrative procedures in public administrations - knowledge of laws, decrees, etc. regulating technical-administrative processes, planning and project instruments at the various scales, procedures and administrative processes for the drafting, approval, implementation and monitoring of spatial, urban and landscape plans and projects is required.
In order to perform function B - freelancer with analysis, monitoring and evaluation functions - the graduate must possess competences and skills in analysis, the definition of indicators, requirements and criteria for planning-oriented monitoring and evaluation, and must be able to use analysis, monitoring and evaluation tools and techniques as well as institutional and legislative frameworks.
For the performance of function C - freelance spatial data analyst and processor, expert in spatial information systems - theoretical and practical foundations are required in the field of analysis, interpretation and processing of spatial data and certain models, techniques and tools that support these activities; also for spatial information systems and cartographic representations, an adequate theoretical and practical basis and the ability to use at least one software for the realisation of spatial information systems are required.
To perform function D - free-lance professional collaborator in the drafting of transformation, redevelopment, recovery and development programmes - it is necessary to be familiar in theory and practice with techniques, methods and tools for environmental and strategic assessments, feasibility studies, and the involvement of non-expert components in planning processes.
For the performance of function E - freelance professional collaborator in various planning activities at all scales - it is necessary to know the regulatory and institutional reference framework, the planning instruments at all scales, their hierarchy, and the processes of definition, approval, implementation, and monitoring. It is also necessary to have the ability to detect, analyse, and structure problems inherent in the physical context to which the activity refers, and to know how to use techniques, methods, and tools to support planning activities, including those oriented towards participatory processes.
In order to perform function F - freelance promoter of local development - the graduate must possess the ability: to read and interpret the different specificities of the local contexts but also to build unprecedented design visions, which are able to make the potentialities expressed by the territories collide with the needs that cross the contemporary. And at the same time it must know how to use devices and languages through which to involve the various actors and subjects living in the territory.

Function in a work context
Junior planner
The three-year degree holder is in possession of basic skills and knowledge that will enable him/her to continue his/her studies in specialised courses in various fields (Planning, Information Systems, Landscape Architecture, Environmental Sciences), to access first-level Master's degree programmes (which require a three-year degree in the same class) or to carry out professional activities (after passing the State Examination for qualification to practise the profession and enrolment in the Professional Order of architects, planners, landscape architects and conservators - section B of the register) in the field of planning, evaluation, urban management.
The main functions in a work context are:
A. in charge of technical-administrative procedures in public administrations for the implementation of plans, policies, programmes, territorial, urban, landscape and environmental issues, also in relation to public works, for which it verifies the existence of the eligibility conditions, carries out the acts and related technical assessments necessary for the various preliminary stages, takes charge of communications, involvement and interaction between the various parties involved in the administrative procedure, collaborates in the management of local development projects;
B. As a freelancer, he develops spatial and urban analyses, systems and procedures for environmental, urban, territorial and landscape monitoring and assessment (e.g. EIA, SEA, etc.),
C. as a freelancer performs the functions of an analyst, defines procedures for the analysis and processing of data of various kinds relating to the territory, landscape, environment and city, produces forms of representation of the results of these analyses and processing (cartographic, textual, etc.), designs and manages spatial information systems;
D. as a freelancer, he collaborates in the drafting of urban, territorial, environmental and landscape transformation, redevelopment and development programmes, and in the management of the implementation processes resulting from them;
E. as a freelancer, collaborates in the drafting of urban, territorial, environmental, landscape or sectoral plans at various scales, with a focus on analysis activities, without assuming overall responsibility for their production, collaborates in the management of local development projects;
F. as a freelance professional plays a role at the various levels of administration as a collaborator and promoter of innovative local development processes, within the framework of European and regional calls for proposals aimed at the rediscovery and design reinterpretation of the various local specificities. Specificities understood not as mere heritage to be exploited, but rather as generating elements of new projects, economies and cultures around which to build yards of innovation, also and through the involvement of a broad social participation.

Educational goals
The Degree Programme in Urban Planning. Environmental Design of the City and the Territory provides the theoretical, methodological and technical tools including the elements of the cultural and historical, economic, social and environmental context to analyse, represent, design and manage the processes of settlement transformation involving the city, the territory, the landscape and the environment.
The degree programme aims to train a professional able to
- analysing, interpreting the dynamics of contemporary urban and territorial processes
- to confront the different scales of the complex problems affecting the urban ecosystem and the current human condition (climate change and territorial risks, inequalities in society and the crisis of welfare systems, forms of progress and processes of cultural homologation induced by global economies, changes in world population...)
- develop effective and lasting ideas, projects and policies for spatial planning, management and governance, process information through information technology.
The degree programme aims to build fundamental competences for the development of cities and the governance of the territory, but also to motivate students to build a learning environment capable of responding adequately to the problems and challenges of the ecological transition involving contemporary urban territories, which require interdisciplinary knowledge, competences in terms of innovative and creative approaches of the project, a sense of responsibility, and an ethical approach towards the environment and living spaces. These are crucial objectives for a new development model for urban territories that is confronted with the different vulnerabilities of not only local contexts.
For this reason, the degree programme favours theoretical and design approaches that enable the student and thus the future urban planner to act in conditions of uncertainty and flexibility, complexity and innovation, interscalarity of processes and interdependence of the actors involved. This is what qualifies the professional figure in relation to the needs that have emerged from the social partners at a local level that also find important feedback at a global level.
The interdisciplinary approach promoted by the degree programme pays particular attention to the 'context' and, more specifically, to that of the many articulations of the Mediterranean landscape and environment, in order to promote a method of investigation and action that students can extend to other broader contexts in which they will be able to operate in their future careers. In relation to other schools of planning and urbanism, the training pathway promoted by the Degree Programme - which anchors itself to the specificity of the Sardinian territory in which historically an idea of the urban has developed that does not always coincide with the idea of a delimited and circumscribed city - provides a wealth of knowledge and skills that
- pursue an orientation towards a design approach that goes beyond the classical city/country dichotomies to reveal the urban potential of the territory in its complexity;
- affirm a conception of the territory as the centre of training and learning processes, as the deep matrix of living spaces;
- search for possible alternatives to the model of the dense city in the interweaving of different scales of the territories and reorient the city towards a spatial reorganisation in which not only city and nature meet but environmental dominants and places dense with history acquire new meanings of new centrality for the city.
These competences enable the graduate to access the Master's degree and to develop professional skills to: a) collaborate in design and planning to manage processes of transformation and redevelopment of the city, the territory, the environment and the landscape; b) manage evaluation activities of urban, territorial, environmental and landscape projects, programmes, plans and policies; c) manage scenario and policy building processes with the involvement of social and economic actors; d) develop and manage territorial information systems.
The need for an apprenticeship pathway that gives the student a greater capacity for job placement thanks to field experience, also thanks to the Erasmus Placement pathways that students undertake in Italy and abroad.
The basic subjects are given ample weight in the first two years of the programme, in order to constitute a solid preparation that will enable students to tackle the growing complexity of design subjects in the final part of the programme. In particular, the basic subjects linked to the study of the environment and its link with the territory (the subject area of ecology) are developed in an articulated pathway also in the second year of the programme, interacting in this case with the design laboratories and the characterising subjects. Relevant is the contribution of the discipline of representation, fundamental for the competences and skills required for the design of urban space. The space dedicated in the first year to historical and archaeological subjects related to the planning and study of the city and the territory is motivated by the need to understand the historical, social, architectural and cultural complexity of the urban and territorial context.
Description and teaching methods
The didactics of the degree programme is delivered in mixed mode. It envisages distance learning mainly for the basic disciplines and for the theoretical lectures of the characterising courses. In particular, for the basic subject areas (mathematics, ecology and geography, representation), the mixed mode provides a balance between distance and face-to-face teaching, since there is a quota of face-to-face exercises.
For the characterising subject areas (architecture and engineering, law, economics and sociology), face-to-face teaching takes precedence over distance learning as it includes all design workshops and practical exercises.
The programme involves teaching in a blended delivery format to
- involve a wider target group of students and expands the pool of students from other regions;
- respond to the proposals of the social partners (ANCI, local administrations, world of professions) with reference to the new guidelines on continuous training;
- meet the requirements of the memorandum of understanding recently signed between the University of Sassari and the Ministry of Public Administration to broaden the knowledge and skills of civil servants (a target audience already present in the degree programme).

The overall didactic offer, as specified in the University and Programme Regulations, is organised in semesters in which teaching units and modules have a distinctive 'title', recalling relevant themes of the city, the environment and the landscape.
The teaching units (also called 'teaching blocks') generally focus on a core design theme around which, in some cases, several disciplines are integrated. Some teaching units are developed independently of the design activities (although in many cases they may delve into interdisciplinary aspects and specific investigations concerning project work).
The first year is devoted to the basic study of the city of the territory, the environment and the landscape, i.e. to 'entering' the semantic fields of the profession's object. The second year is dedicated to an in-depth study of the methods and practices of the project and of environmental, urban and territorial planning with an increasing focus on issues related to the protection of the territory. The third year is dedicated to a recapitulation and in-depth study and is centred on a teaching unit that deals with the relationship between plan and project, and on end-of-career paths (long placement and dissertation on that experience, design/planning workshop, dissertation linked to a research topic).
The design activities involve the presence of tutors, young professionals who are experts in the subject, who follow the workshop and project activities, and in some cases the teaching activities of the lectures. Intermediate learning assessment activities are planned (written and oral tests, intermediate critiques of the workshop projects).
The degree programme also aims to provide students with a constant stimulus for the written and oral knowledge and use of foreign languages, both through the teaching of English and indirectly through the experiences that the degree programme and the Department organise to nurture an international and intercultural learning environment (open lectures and conferences, international workshops and summer schools, group work with Erasmus students from different backgrounds). In this sense, graduates must be able to use fluently, in written and oral form, at least the English language, with reference also to national and international disciplinary lexicons.
During the three-year degree programme, the educational activities chosen independently by the student are developed: the degree programme suggests a number of in-depth educational activities that enrich and expand the range of teaching units and modules on offer. The final semester also focuses on internship activities in which the student develops experience in applied research and direct knowledge of the professional world; on end-of-career paths that have different articulations according to the student's specific training needs.