The research comes from the perception of the rare prioritization given to open spaces in some public universities in Brazil and aims to answer how they can be highlighted in order to acknowledge the pedagogical potential of the university campus. The case study is the main campus of the Federal University of Santa Catarina, which shares some similar conditions with most of the public universities in the country. As a starting point, an exploratory literature review attempts to find studies about the role of universities in the face of the great challenges of contemporary society and how the university campus, more specifically its open spaces, can contribute in this direction. Among the challenges is a political-pedagogical project that involves the shift of the campus from a multidisciplinary approach to an interdisciplinary one, and a further deep and necessary transformation towards transdisciplinarity. Therefore, a university must assume its integrative and system thinking approach, reducing the fragmentation of its structure, and strengthening its internal relationships with the environment, as well as with society. The walkability on the campus free spaces and between the campus and the city was selected for the study due to its potential to promote these relationships.

In a second moment of the research, methodological proceedings were realized through the exploration of digital data that sought to map the face-to-face dynamics of the academic community. In this experimental approach, the database of the university is explored guaranteeing the privacy of the academic community, in compliance with the General Data Protection Law (BRASIL, 2018). The studies developed following this approach are directly associated with the local aspects, but the proposed approach is unprecedented and can contribute to any university that manages an Eduroam based Wi-Fi network. The connections on the campus Wi-Fi network and the association of data with the individual ID number of each member have allowed important findings regarding the potential spaces for interdisciplinary encounters, the possibilities of active transport modal and the incentive of public transport system. From the results achieved, the research concludes with the identification of the pedagogical and social potentials of open spaces that can significantly impact campus and urban life.