The Hispanic International Seminar on Urban Form (ISUF-H). A platform for dialogue between urban planners and urban form researchers in Spanish-speaking countries

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper is aimed at introducing the readers of Planning Perspectives to the Hispanic International Seminar on Urban Form (ISUF-H), a network for urban studies from morphological perspectives in Spanish-speaking countries. The platform is framed within the context of the research carried out at ISUF and its relationships with other schools and traditions of urban forms. The paper considers the themes and approaches presented at the ISUF-H conferences in Toledo (2016), Zaragoza (2018), Guadalajara-Mexico (2019), Barcelona (2020) and San José-Costa Rica (2021). In general, the diversity and vitality of research in the Spanish language is confirmed with the emergence and renewal of the themes and methodologies of analysis and eclectic approaches – with those of architects and urban planners dominating over those of geographers and specialists from other disciplines; this, in turn, demonstrates that barriers in the multidisciplinary dialogue remain and are an important challenge. Retrospective views and diagnoses based on the analysis of urban forms coexist with forward-looking views that consider current urban processes. The challenges of the ISUF-H are, therefore, akin to those of the ISUF, but also complementary, since they acknowledge the need to promote inclusive and multidisciplinary views over sectorial ones and to expand the anglophone field to include research carried out in Spanish-speaking countries.