The challenges of planning in the unequal cities. "Urban poverty workshop" for innovating urban planners education path

The recent shift from the Millennium Development Goals to the Sustainable Development Goals scored a point of no return in the international debate on development, stating that the separation between the rich part and the poor part of the population is no longer with the North and the South of the world, but between nearby areas in always more highly polarized contexts. In this framework, a deeper knowledge of the spatial dimension of poverty and of its spatial implications is required; especially in the Italian Faculty of Architecture where urban design and plan-making are frequently still considered "the real core" of the discipline with the general under-evaluation of the wicked problems. On the contrary, in the United States, thanks to the passionate work of Ananya Roy, this knowledge found its place, first in the university program at the Institute of Urban and Regional Development of UC Berkeley, and then in Los Angeles, being highly appreciated both by students, scholars and NGOs. According to this awareness, the first workshop "Urban Poverty. The praxis of planning in unequal cities" organized in September 2016 at the Sapienza’s Faculty of Architecture in Rome, gave the opportunity for discussing and testing theory and practices of urban research and city planning with issues of poverty, in particular regards of western cities and the city of Rome. This first experiment offered the opportunity to think about the interdisciplinary and/or international teaching aimed at preparing students for today’s and tomorrow’s planning challenges in the unequal cities.