The Instituto Universitario de Urbanística (1991-2021): building a research culture

Abstract

The Instituto Universitario de Urbanística (IUU) (University Institute of Urban Planning) of the Universidad de Valladolid was founded in 1991 and it is the only one of its kind in the Spanish territory. Throughout those three decades of existence, the research group “Planificación territorial y urbanística” (IUU_Lab) (Territorial and Urban Planning) has developed, as the driving force of the institute, a very diversified activity that this article seeks to analyse and show synthetically, inserted in the urban development in Spain since the 1980s. The study of the scientific production that has marked the group’s trajectory as well as the disciplinary influences it has received, allows the authors to characterise four main fields of knowledge construction and disciplinary reflection: reformist urban planning, urban-territorial planning, urban regeneration, and rural environment. The whole analysis developed reveals, on the one hand, some links established between certain problems of Spanish urbanism and research in Urban and Territorial Planning; and, on the other hand, the validity of an epistemological vision of Urban Planning understood as a knowledge of interdisciplinary nature and practical orientation, nurtured by a historical conscience.