Ecoplanning and Environmental Reform in a Metropolitan Fringe
Sant SadurnÍ D'anoia, Catalonia
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4487869 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Maria Àngels Alió (Professor of geography at the University of Barcelona, 08001 Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain; [].), Liliana Fracasso (0000-0003-4344-259X, Professor of geography at the Academy of Fine Arts of Foggia, 71121 Foggia, Italy; [].), Sandra Estrella (Independent scholar in urban environmental planning in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain; [].) |
| Year | 2012 |
| Volume | 102 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 245-258 |
| Publication date | 2012-04-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Geographical Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0016-7428 • E-ISSN: 1931-0846 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1931-0846.2012.00145.x |
| OpenAlex | W1963688171 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 10 |
Urban planners normally consider a territory, be it a town, city, or region, as merely a physical location for economic growth and urban expansion. Yet the tension between expectations in terms of quality of life linked to the enlargement of urban systems, on one hand, and the degradation of natural resources, on the other, has put the spotlight on the relationships between environmental and human systems within the framework of contemporary social processes. The recognition of the coevolutionary dynamic involving society and environment represents a great responsibility for urban planners and has led them to propose new and necessarily more complex tools. It is also a great responsibility for geographers, especially since the emergence of the concept of sustainability in public policies, which has led to a thorough reappraisal of the relationships between nature and society. In the late 198os Robert Kates emphasized the implications of the concept of sustainability as a new theoretical framework that was beginning to establish itself (1987, 530). Other geographers soon began to work on the subject. In the mid-19905 Karl Zimmerer referred to a new ecological human geography that investigated the social and economic interconnections between local and extralocal spatial scales in order to understand environmental impacts (1994, 117). At the same time, in Europe Torsten Hagerstrand researched the impact of construction and the possibilities of building along ecological lines and using natural raw materials (Diaz Munoz 1994). Attempts to analyze the relationships between modern technological societies and the environmental problems they generated characterized the 199os. Studies also focused on the ability of public policies to resolve these problems and to introduce changes favoring models of sustainability, including criteria for prevention (O'Riordan and Jordan 1995). A more critical vision, one that emphasized the role of social inequality in environmental policies, emerged alongside this growing interest. In 1997 Raymond L. Bryant discussed the possibility of applying political ecology as a framework for research on environmental policy in the Third World, where most policies and most research used the criterion of sustainability for rhetorical purposes. Bryant quoted David Harvey's 1993 claim that political and economic arguments were never ecologically and socially neutral (Bryant 1997, 9). Our research team began to explore these themes in 1990 on the occasion of one of the first citizens' environmental movements created to debate Catalan policies concerning industrial waste treatment. One of the first conclusions we reached was that, not just in Catalonia but elsewhere in Europe, these policies were not socially neutral (Alio and Bra 1990). Since then we have carried out many studies of ecology movements and have complemented our work with studies of the role of government tools, in particular the role of local government in introducing the sustainability model into local regulations (Alio, Kendall, and Laredo 1999; Alio and Jori 2010; Jori 2011). In all of our studies we have noted the major difficulties involved in addressing the ecological transformation of cities and municipalities. But we have also observed the great potential of certain local tools, especially local urban planning. In this essay we present the results of one of our latest studies of this issue, centered on the local environmental audit of Sant Sadurni d'Anoia, a town on the fringe of metropolitan Barcelona, and its relationship to urban planning (csAA 2006). INTRODUCING LOCAL PLANNING TOOLS FOR SUSTAINABILITY In many countries the interactions between both physical and social processes and regulations governing the environment have become very explicit at the local scale. In this context the ecological transformation of urban spaces constitutes a challenge that requires the recognition of sustainability criteria, including the participatory process, inside the legal administrative system
Business · Economic geography · Environmental ethics · Environmental planning · Environmental quality · Geography · Metropolitan area · Natural (archaeology · Natural resource · Order (exchange · Political science · Sociology · Sustainability · Ecology · Land Use and Ecosystem Services · Law · Urban Green Space and Health · Urban Transport and Accessibility
| Highly cited | No |
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