Master in Territorial Planning and Management: the program that takes place in a natural and cultural laboratory of excellence

The Magister in Planning and Territorial Management of the Catholic University of Temuco in its XVI version, has open applications for the year 2023, the call will be extended until February 27 of this year.

The Master addresses territorial imbalances and how, based on knowledge, it is possible to contribute to more balanced territories and with a better quality of life in a context of sustainability.

This is developed under the wing of the Territorial Planning Laboratory, a national reference unit in its discipline, which already has 24 years of existence developing scientific, technological and technical assistance projects in conjunction with regional governments and the Department. of Environmental Sciences. Therefore, the program has an academic team with extensive theoretical and practical experience for the development of the disciplinary topics of the Master.
Dr. Fernando Peña Cortés, Professor and PhD in Environmental Sciences, is currently part of the program’s faculty, and indicated that the experience in the Master’s has allowed him to contribute to the knowledge of methodological tools and techniques to be able to plan and manage the territories, especially the one in which the program is taught “this Master’s degree arises in a territory that is a natural and cultural laboratory of excellence, it is a space that has great potential, the region richest in renewable natural resources, but also a region with high social vulnerability, historical conflicts and a marked intercultural context”. In relation to this, the academic highlighted the importance of knowing the problems of the territory first-hand.

The program already has more than 80 graduates throughout its history, who come from different disciplines, in this, the professor emphasized that “in their graduation activities they have been able to contribute with concrete evaluation tools, for example, studies on the social marginalization, poverty, natural risks, local knowledge, citizen participation and, especially, on the instruments and methodologies to be able to plan, organize or manage the territory”.

Another aspect of the Master is that it is organized in a year and a half (three semesters) and the degree work begins in the first semester, continues in the second and ends in the third, with the development of a technical report or scientific article.

For his part, Eduardo Fernández, who attended the program between 2010 and 2011, describes the program as an opportunity that contributed a lot to his professional growth, “the experience I had was super enriching in the sense of being able to acquire new methodological aspects associated with to land planning, specifically tools from different perspectives, that is what I liked the most and nourished the experience. I remember, for example, having seen Methodology associated with Techno-Urbanism, Participatory Methodologies and Methodologies for the Definition of Environmental Units”.

The former student highlighted the diversity of experiences and teachers that allowed to know more references and perspectives of each topic. On the other hand, he indicated that it helped him to deepen methodological aspects, “I deepened Methodologies and it was well applied, I also liked that a lot, thinking that it is a Master’s program, not so much in philosophical, theoretical aspects, but rather in applied topics , case studies and that kind of thing”.

Fernández emphasized the importance of the applied perspective of the program, which later helped him to specialize in research projects of the same type “I am currently working on FONDEF and Innova Corfo projects, those are the ones I manage and where I have had the most experience, in addition to consultancies and advisory services, on the other hand, I have also taught in different subjects, but the elements of the Master really helped me much more for the aspects of these projects” he concluded.
.