Giancarlo Cotella is the new AESOP Secretary General
With over 150 members, AESOP (Association of European Schools of Planning) is the only representation of planning schools of Europe. Given this unique position, AESOP strengthens its profile as a professional body. AESOP mobilizes its resources, taking a leading role and entering its expertise into ongoing debates and initiatives regarding planning education and planning qualifications of future professionals. AESOP promotes its agenda with professional bodies, politicians and all other key stakeholders in spatial and urban development and management across Europe.
Its General Secretariat is entrusted this year to the Politecnico, the first Italian school to be chosen. The professor who will takes office as the new AESOP Secretary General will be Giancarlo Cotella of the Interuniversity Department of Regional and Urban Studies and Planning (DIST). The Ph.D. candidate Donato Casavola will support him as Assistant to the Secretary General.
Cotella's appointment took place at the 35th AESOP 2023 Annual Congress in Łódź on “Integrated Planning in a World of Turbulence”. He replaced Professor Angelique Chettiparamb of the University of Reading, UK: the change took place during the final session of the conference.
This is an important opportunity to consolidate the international visibility of the Italian spatial planning community as well as of the spatial planning bachelor and master courses of POLITO Schools of Planning and Design.
"I am very honored to have been asked to serve, for the next four years, as Secretary General of AESOP – comments Giancarlo Cotella – Indeed, this Association plays a crucial role in monitoring and supporting the continuous redefinition of educational pathways in the field of spatial planning in Europe. The fact that the seat of the Secretariat is for the first time in Italy can only help to further consolidate the national urban planning community and increase its prominence in the continental arena".
"In these four years – Cotella continues – I would like to succeed in increasing the participation of our Schools in the activities of AESOP, starting with the involvement of Ph.D. students and young researchers, who will constitute the future of our discipline in the years to come. In addition, I would like to open the doors to contaminations arising from the activities of associations similar to ours and active in other continental contexts, such as the associations of African, Asian and South American planning schools, all with a view to defining a theory of global planning that is heterogeneous and attentive to the real needs of places".