The professor of the School of Architecture of the University of Navarra José Luque Valdivia has presented a new publication on urban planning, entitled Constructors of the Contemporary City.

The book gathers the results of a research developed in the department of Urbanism of the School since 1996, with the participation of professors, students and graduate architects. partnership In addition, specialists from the School of Philosophy and Letters of the University have been involved.

goal The work, in the author's own words, "aims to identify a disciplinary corpus of urban planning, that is, a set of texts - treatises, manuals, manifestos, etc. - that would serve to understand the objectives and means to be used in building the city. Trips abroad were also made to access specific bibliographies on certain authors or periods. Personally, I find result highly satisfactory".

Professor Luque recognizes that "this is not a work staff, but a collective publication, in the truest sense of the term, not only because we have involved a good issue of people, but because it reflects the work of hundreds of men and women who have strived to facilitate the construction of a better city".

Internal history of urban planning

The book is aimed "at people dedicated to the history of urban planning, especially those who are interested in knowing how urban planning has evolved, the relationship between urban theories and the cultural thought of each moment, that is, what we could call the internal history of urban planning".

The book comprises an exhaustive work that began in 1996. "Since then we can say that it has not been finished; we have tried to keep it up to date, enriching it with books or articles that were published. The final preparation of the book, already on contact with the publishing house, took practically 12 months."

In addition, there is a web page with extensive information about the research and the book: "There you can see the names of all those who have written some of the monographs. But the exact issue of those who have been involved is difficult to specify. On the first page of the book 23 people are mentioned: from Carlos Martínez Caro, who was Full Professor and director of department, and knew how to encourage and stimulate us from the first moment of the research working as one more, to María Luisa Armendáriz, in charge of the Library Services of the School of Architecture".