The Interuniversity Department of Regional and Urban Studies and Planning (DIST) is the reference structure of the Polytechnic and the University of Turin in the cultural areas that study the processes of transformation and governance of the territory from the global to the local scale, considered in the its physical, economic, social, political, cultural aspects and their interrelations, in a perspective of sustainability.
As a result of art. 1 of the L. 232/2016 (clauses 319, 320) the DIST department has been recognized as one of the 180 excellence departments of the Italian university system, and thus granted special funding for the 2018-2022 period (MIUR). The resulting Excellence Project aims at maximizing the department capacity to answer to the UN Agenda 2030 challenges (“Transforming our world: the 2030 agenda for sustainable development”, 2015) and, in specific, to contribute to reach the objectives of the Sustainable Development Goal 11: “Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable”
The taught programmes in the DIST Department aim to provide expertise on the complex processes that affect space and its relations with the contemporary economy and society, combining the technical, physical and morphological dimensions of the processes with their normative, value and symbolic characteristics.
Ecosystems and territories, institutions and social, economic, political, and environmental processes are at the centre of a pedagogical project that is based on the values of interdisciplinarity, intellectual leadership and integration of knowledge, as well as the social values of equality, democracy, and sustainability.