ABSTRACT
As a conceptual framework and a terrain of action, human settlements involved experts in socioeconomic planning and urban management in the agenda of technical assistance and development aid while acknowledging the contribution of the design disciplines. The field was consolidated in the 1970s and 1980s as both a professional practice displaying a particular kind of expertise and an academic discipline involving specific lines of research and specific pedagogies. This contribution focuses on this consolidation process by tackling the professional legitimacy of architects and urban designers as manifested throughout various training programs established under the aegis of development. The chapter delves into these pedagogic endeavors by critically contextualizing and reviewing the establishment of the Post Graduate Centre Human Settlements (PGCHS) at the KU Leuven, Belgium. It engages with the center’s theoretical framing of the human settlements endeavor throughout its maturation phase during the late 1970s and 1980s, where the center sought to establish international connections, developed a UN-mandated short-term training program, and set up an institutional framework that assembled its many dispersed activities into a holistic approach toward the built environment.
