Natural heritage and urban growth: Ethics, Sustainability Education and Governance

Abstract

The relationship between urban and rural areas cannot be considered a territorial antagonism. Not any more. The urban growth, the density of both building and population pushes the rural world into a dependent position commonly expressed in terms of lacking technology and scarce resources on political action. Additionally, for the first time in human history, the bulk of population occupies the urban areas. Nevertheless, since the «non-urban» type has conquered privileges as environmental reserve, the emergence of environmental issues has changed the social value of both rural and non-urbanized areas. Besides that the “rural world” now seems to be the holder of the traditions as well as the local identity values. In the present paper the main question can be sketched out in the following terms: in which way the urban growth has shifted the opposite urban-rural relationship into city-hinterland integration? This question is one step ahead of the dichotomy “modernity-tradition” and leads us to think in terms of “change-conservation” dichotomy. We must regard a city as a macro-organism that achieves and maintains its balance through an equitable distribution of functions: residence, public/private services, and leisure. To rule a city is to develop policies that promote the well-being and its citizen involvement. A city without participation is not sustainable and a city threatened by the scarcity of resources or by environmental risks becomes a frightened city. The public participation can’t be a result of collective fear. We must think about the urban planning as a territorial planning of land uses. There is a democratic form of doing that: public participation and environmental concern as a civil value. We discuss in this work some questions on environmental ethics, contents to public campaigns of Sustainability education and we present a reflection about urban areas subjected to quick growth in Portugal.