Being Van Kampen is a universal property

Abstract: Colimits that satisfy the Van Kampen condition have interesting exactness properties. We show that the elementary presentation of the Van Kampen condition is actually a characterisation of a universal property in the associated bicategory of spans. The main theorem states that Van Kampen cocones are precisely those diagrams in a category that induce bicolimit diagrams in its associated bicategory of spans, provided that the category has pullbacks and enough colimits.