Redefining the Urban Planner’s Role: Gaps in Architectural Education and the Challenge of Informality in Ecuador, Peru and Chile

Schroeder S.; Pozo R.; Medina K. · Land (2026) · DOI: 10.3390/land15050880

Resumen

Urban informality is a defining feature of Latin American urbanisation, with estimates suggesting that up to 80% of the urban landscape has been informally built. Despite its centrality in urban development, its integration into architectural education remains limited, revealing a gap between the realities of city-making and the professional training offered by universities. This study examines how architecture programmes in Chile, Peru, and Ecuador address urban informality and the extent to which they prepare future professionals to engage with the dominant modes of urban production in the region. Using a qualitative and comparative methodology, the curricula, course descriptions, and academic lines of 50 universities were analysed across three dimensions: (1) the thematic presence of concepts related to informality, (2) the degree of curricular integration—core, transversal, or tangential—and (3) pedagogical orientation, classified as technical–normative, social–critical, or interdisciplinary. The results reveal a fragmented and uneven incorporation of urban informality. Chile shows the highest relative presence, though often embedded indirectly within broader themes such as inequality or sustainability and framed through technical–normative approaches. Peru and Ecuador display even more limited integration, generally confined to isolated courses or electives. The study argues that this marginal incorporation weakens the preparation of professionals working in contexts where informality is a structural urban condition and calls for an “informal turn” in built-environment education.

Instituciones: Universidad Nacional Jorge Basadre Grohmann