environment and urban sustainability

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CIEAP/UAEMPapeles de POBLACIÓN No. 49

Environment andurban sustainability

José Luis Lezama and Judith DomínguezEl Colegio de México

Resumen

Este artículo recoge la discusión sobre eldesarrollo sustentable, la sustentabilidad urbanay los procesos dirigidos a conformar una ciudadinclusiva. La sustentabilidad urbana es unproceso que implica cambios estructurales enlas instituciones y en los valores y pautas deconducta social. La construcción de ciudadessustentables se orienta a la conformación desitios habitables, seguros, justos, desocialización, que preserven sus característicasculturales y ambientales y permitan eldesarrollo del ser humano, sin comprometer elmedio ambiente de las generaciones futuras.Debe proveer elementos para efectuar unacceso más equitativo, igualitario ydemocrático a la riqueza natural o socialmentegenerada, así como generar por la víainstitucional, educativa y moral, unamentalidad y una sensibilidad social para pensara la naturaleza como un valor en sí mismo.

Palabras clave: medio ambiente, desarrollosustentable, sustentabilidad urbana, protecciónambiental.

Introduction

T

Abstract

This article gathers the discussion onsustainable development, the urbansustainability and the processes addressed toform an inclusive city. The urban sustainabilityis a process that implies structural changes inthe institutions and in the values and socialbehavior guidelines. The construction ofsustainable cities is directed to theconformation of livable, safe, just, ofsocialization places that preserve their culturaland environmental characteristics and allowthe development of the human being, withoutcompromising the environment of futuregenerations. It must provide elements tocreate a more equitable, egalitarian anddemocratic access to the natural richness orsocially generated, as well as to generate by theinstitutional, educational and moral ways, amentality and a social sensibility to think ofnature as a value in itself.

Key words: environment, sustainabledevelopment, urban sustainability,environmental protection.

he city has been considered as the most effective territorial form of themodernity and as a spatial sphere where the principles of modernity areexpressed in better ways and with more details, this is, the principle of

reason, equality, democracy, the possibility of choosing, etc. but the city not onlyexpresses the assets or acquisitions of the modern society, but also their wrongs.One of these derives from the excess of rationality and from an excess of the

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artificiality that it incarnates. The city is the best example of the subordination andthe yielding of nature that modernity represents. The city is not only created asa negation of nature, on which is erected, but also from that it nourishes andreproduces it productions, consumption forms and life styles. The city and theprocesses that animate it are not from the city itself and are not explained by thelogic of anonymous processes, but rather by the activity and the task of the actorsthat interact there, exchanging products, symbols and power. In the city it is alsoexpressed the maximum estrangement from the natural, the reduction to rawmaterial of the natural world, to production consumables. The city not onlysubjects and denies nature, but it reifies it, transforms it into a dead matter andlives it in an inert way, separate and distant from the source of life and sense itcomes from.

The values and principles of the modern society, that constitute the factoryand the meaning of the city, represent in many senses the antithesis of thesustainability. The processes that take place there, the economic, social, politicaland instrumental rationalities that are displayed there become the irrational andnon- sustainability consumption of its own natural ambience and from those werethe energy and material required for their productive processes are taken. Thenature enters the city as material richness leaves it under the form of dead matterand pollution. Converted into capital, in social structures and power structures,nature processed in that way becomes inequity, domination and control systems.

The sustainability of some cities or the presence of some sustainabilityelements in certain urban centers can be given at a very high rate for the otherterritorial ambiences, regional, national and international which provide thenature that is consumed there.

The dynamic and independent relations of the sustainability and the nosustainability of cities and regions has been exposed by the authors of the called'ecologic strike', by which the cost, in the called natural capital, can be seen, ofthe productive processes and of consumption of the cities and also the expensivethat the sustainability reached by some urban centers or prosperous regions is formany parts of the world

Seen at an urban level, the same as that in is more ample sense, the'sustainable development', about development, implies the notion of socialwelfare, having to advance towards the more ample ideas and practices ofjustice, democracy and equity. About the sustainability, the emphasis should notbe limited to the preservation of the natural richness and its availability to satisfythe present (intragenerational solidarity) or future (intergenerational solidarity)

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human needs. Both components: development and sustainability, in their generaland urban dimensions, cannot be limited to guarantee or promote the permanenceof the minimal natural capital required to ensure the continuity of the human race.They also have to promote necessary elements to produce a more equitable andmore democratic access to the natural richness or socially generated and, at thesame time, to generate by the institutional, education and moral ways, a socialmentality and sensibility to think of the nature also as a value in itself, as anauthentic and autonomous part with sense and reason of existence. Even whenthis notion could seem, on one hand, an ecocentral assertion, on the other it couldbe understood as a subtle expression of the anthropocentrism, since nothingwould be better for the human purposes that a reconstituted, multiplied, diverseand perdurable nature.

The sustainable development must then be seen, on the one hand, as adevelopment that, satisfying the present needs, guarantees the future generationthe satisfaction of their needs, and on the other hand, as a development that buildsthe political and social bases for a redistribution of the power that allows, bymeans of the exercise of democracy, a more equalitarian access to thesatisfactors that the human work produces with the resources nature provides.Social welfare must be a human acquisition to which is accessed in a democraticway. The sustainable development makes reference to the viability of the humanspecies, to the viability in the general life and to the viability of the political systemsto ensure the justice and equity in the satisfaction of the human needs. Thesustainable development, as well as the environmental problems, is explained bythe relation of the man with the nature, but also, and almost always, by the relationof the men, by their social structures, their domination systems and the powerresources they have at hand to reach their projects of life.

The meaning of the sustainable development

During the decade of 1970, the environmental discussion of the 1960's is takenup again and, in fact, in the seventies the born of this new look is capitalized, ofthat social sensibility that emerges in the west world, that derives from what someauthors consider as a change of values and the creation of a new culture. Theseare the phenomena also related to the Movement of the 68, the called contra-culture, and the different protest movements by which the more ample changesare expressed, those that take place in the modern industrial society, in thecapitalist society. It emerges, then, a "social capacity of seeing" problem that,



even that they existed in previous periods, they were not perceived socially, asit is the case of the environmental problems. The society begins to perceive thedamage and environment risk not because there did not exist before, but becauseculturally it is, in that new stage, habilitated with another point of view, with othersensibility to perceive them and to transform them in objects of preoccupations.

The decade of 1970 starts with clear samples of this conceptual maturity thatallows the environmental to emerge within the grand worries of the modernindustrial society. Testimony of that is given by the Stockholm Summit on HumanEnvironment as a series of publications that, directly or indirectly, put theenvironmental in the centre of the preoccupations. In this sense, we can mentionworks such as Blueprint for survival by Edward Goldsmith et al. (1972), Thepopulation bomb by Ehrlich (1972), The limits to growth by Meadows et al.(1972) Only one earth by Ward and Dubos (1972), The small is beautiful bySchumacher (1973). All of them, with different emphasis, under differentpremises and following their own analytical objectives, give place to a sort of awider social initiation and recognition to the environmental problematic, introducingit in the more general context of the contradictions and central crises of themodern industrial society. At the same time, in the very ecology field, there is aphilosophical, political and social reflection that shapes something that has beencalled political ecology, field where, under different perspectives, most of theconstestatary trends start the most comprehensive and general critic of theindustrial society and their relation with their natural world. Even when thedifferent authors who form this environmental thinking current are differencedby centering the objective of their worries on the man-nature relation in thehuman being and their welfare (antropocentrist) or in asserting the nature as avalue in itself (ecocentrist), they have in common to criticize the excesses of theindustrial society, their developing logic, their support to consumption and thereduction of nature to mere raw materials, consumables for the production ornatural resources.

The evolution of the environmentalist thinking that led the Rio Summit in 1992,as well as the ideas proposed in the Brundtland Report of 1987, in some wayconstitutes the consolidation and predomination of the ideas of the first movementdescribed and the margination, at least in the social discourse, of the more radicalproposals of the political ecology. The discourse of the sustainable developmentdominates, since the mid 1980's the governmental public policy, and has becomein the common language that has made possible the interlocution between thedifferent actors, institutions, agencies that are in charge of the environmentalfield.

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The most notorious consequence of this fact has been the concentration ofthe intellectual and governmental effort in the search of mechanisms, instrumentsand strategies to conciliate the traditional economic development with theenvironment. This is what authors such, as Hajer (1995) have called theecological modernization, from which the sustainable development is the mostdetailed example. Under its principles, the damage and environmental crisis, thatin the political ecology discourse are consubstantial to the deployment of themodern industrial society, appear as distortions that can be dealt with, administeredand controlled by the science, the technology and the institutions of the modernsociety. The utilitarian, productivist and consumist conception of the natureremains intact and the sustainability discourse becomes preservationist,conversationalist and administrative proposals, where the environmental problemsthat the public policy is in charge of are constructed as pollution problems, ofexcesses that must and can be controlled, as well of predictable and correctiblefailures in the functioning of the institutions.

The sustainable development, which is the predominant approach in thepresent in the academy, government and non-governmental groups, was firstplanted as a problem related to the environment's charge capacity (limits togrowth) and has evolved in some regions until meaning the disconnection of theeconomic development of the usage of the natural resources (IV EnvironmentalProgram of the European Union). On the other hand, nowadays there is alsomake reference to other sustainability that must accompany that former onewhen the emphasis seemed to be focused on the maintenance and reproductionof nature, considered in that context as a natural capital. The idea of thesustainable development emerges from the recognition and proposes at the sametime the need of the social system. The recognition consists on accepting andbeing conscious that the development model of the modern industrial society(capitalist or socialist) has reached certain limits that propose the viabilityproblems in the future. The industrial modern societies cannot continue with thesame ecological logic, with the same natural resources exploitation rhythm of theand with the same demographic pattern current until the decade of 1970.Therefore, it is proposed that the only way to give viability to the system as awhole, of giving it continuity, is by the rationalization of their premises and thebehaviors that derive from them. The works previously mentioned have incommon the fact of proposing the need of looking for a different rationality forthe new modernity stage that emerges in the modern world. It is not aboutrefunding but of refunctionalizing the modern society to make congruent three



tendencies that, when dephasing and pursuing separate goals, they have led toa cul-de-sac, to the base, principles and economic goals of the industrial society,but it gave place to what since the decade of 1970 was qualified as anenvironmental crisis: the economic development, the environment and thepopulation. It was this need of conciliation, of refunctionalization and administrationof the environmental crisis within the logic of the mentioned ecologicalmodernization, what led to the proposals of sustainable development.

A more complete proposal, and even more effective within the same logic ofthe ecological modernization, must imply deeper transformations of the productionand consumption, as well as advance towards a transcendence of the simpleeconomic rationality and the search for a social and political sustainability. Theenvironment problematic is not only about the natural world, but also of thenormative and symbolic ones with it constitutes itself. In this perspective, therelation of the man with the nature includes cognitive, ethical, moral, social andsymbolic considerations (Ferry, 1992; Eder, 1996).

For many environmentalists, the sustainable development is a rhetoric andcontradictory concept and, mainly in its political and discursive use by governmentsand national and international institutions. For them, the environmental issomething that has to be present in the governmental language to account for aphenomenon that is socially perceived as significant, that worries the society andthat, sometimes, has been considered as part of the social welfare. The officialinclusion of the environmental, of what is green or sustainable is, many times, partof a discursive strategy to "turn green" the governmental action.

The different approaches to explain the urban sustainability has to do withphilosophical developments on the position that the man assumes within thenature (Sprout, 1978).

The sustainable development makes compatible the economic and socialdevelopment with the protection to the environment, others recognize that evenif they are more utopian orientations, are necessary as proposals of an alternativedevelopment to the ruling model in the search of an ecologically responsiblesociety (De Geus, 1999). All of them, however, imply a change of attitudes andsocial and cultural values, that are orientated towards what has been called thepost-modernity (Inglehart, 1997), being econcentric or anthropocentric proposals,that surpass the exclusively technological approach.

Among the approaches that place men as a species within the nature is thebio-regionalism, with a more egocentric perspective (Eckersley, 1992), aninteresting proposal based on the concept of bio-region, that more than a

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geographical concept, is a cultural construction, an element of the conscience,that looks for the harmony of the man with the nature. This idea finds moreapplication in small urban spheres, but that, after a strong institutional commitment,can be applied to big cities where, if successful, the effects will be of a strongpositive impact for the environment. Although we have to admit that it meets thelimitation of the complexity already lived in the cities, even more in the metropolis.It postulates the self-sufficiency to acquire the goods necessary for the socialreproduction, using the rural environment surrounding the city (urban hinterland)by means the exchange of goods.

In this approach is mentioned the reconciliation between the man and thenature, more than the conquest and competition attitudes (Atkinson, 1992), andimplies that acknowledgment of traditional practices, constituting an approachdifferent from life planning and organization. Then, the bio-regions are theproduct of the interaction between culture and nature. For Gudynas (2002) thebioregions are "geographical spaces where there are homogeneous charactersfrom the ecological point of view, with strong links between the humanpopulations and complementarities and similitudes in the human uses that aremade from these ecosystems", but also is a cultural constitution —according toBerg— because it implies questions on fundamental issues for the human being:who am I and where am I going to?

They propose the rehabilitation of the spaces with a state of differentconscience. Results an interesting alternative because it implies substantivechanges in the way to sustainability (Campell, 1996) giving it the character ofmethod within this process (Berg, 2005). The idea of an environmental arrangementby watersheds is congruent with this way of approaching the environmentalproblematic.

The urban environment sustainability

The studies on the city have recently directed their concern to another kinds ofurban problems, further the exclusively economic approaches, and although theurban development vision funded in productivity criteria still predominates, it isbeginning to acknowledge the fact that the competitiveness demands conditionsof the urban environment that propitiate a favorable work ambience, of safetyand environmental. This requires new approaches to the urban problematic; theenvironmental dimension of the urban development is, nowadays, a pre-requisiteto think on the city.



The econsystematic approach sees the city as a series of systems thatinteract among themselves and that are interdependent. The systematic perspectiveallows the understanding of the interaction among the environmental systems,the human systems and the constructed systems (Young, 1994) more adequateto the current functioning of the man-nature relation and the modifications it hadsuffered; with subsystems (water, soil, air) that are also in constant dependency.This approach was adopted in the Summit of Rio and in the elaboration of theAgenda 21, and is the one that prevails in the approximations of the EuropeanUnion to the urban problematic in the design of sustainable cities.

To talk about urban sustainability we have to refer to the three dimensions thatintegrate the principle: the social, the economic and the environmental. It doesnot have a uniform meaning, but, on the contrary, it varies according to the urbanenvironment it is applied to, this is, there is not an ideal type of sustainable city,but this is conformed according to its own environmental, regional characteristicsand social or economic conditions, acknowledging that not all the cities have thesame problems.

The environmental sustainability, however, should have a privileged placesince it constitutes the support for the other two dimension of the sustainabledevelopment concept. The development processes that only favor the economicor social aspects have led to the depletion and degradation of the naturalresources and to the anthropogenic pressure, each time stronger, demandedfrom them, as raw material or environmental services.

The different national or international informs show that we live in anurbanized world (75 percent of the world population lives in cities) and that in theThird World there are urbanization phenomena of the poverty due to the largemigrations from the rural to the urban spheres since the cities concentrate themost profitable economic activities. This fact brings along a strong demographicpressure on the natural resources and the increasing demand for humansatisfactors and raw material, reaching to unsustainability situations and of highdependence of the city to distant environments (Castells and Borja, 1997). It isnot surprising, then, that the worries of environmental nature are one of the moreimportant reflections on the future cities.

For Satterthwaite (1988), the urban reflection on the sustainability hasweakened the importance of the biodiversity conservation and the perceptionthat the city is separated from the natural processes still prevails and it is revealedin the ways of fragmented urban managements. The idea of the XIX of the manseparated from the nature and in a higher position of domination, established an

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instrumentalist and exclusive vision of the urban system (Kasarda and Pornell,1993).

Nowadays, the urbanism must be oriented toward more environmentalisttrends not only for environmental protections matters, but of coherence with theadequate environment necessary for the development of the human being. Theinstrumental vision that prevails, not only in the design of policies but also in thesocial perception, requires a reorientation and re-planning on what was constructed(Inoguchi et al., 1999). It also implies creative processes that have in mind thediversity and the capacity (Carta de Aalborg) changing the orientation of thefunction of the city to its origins of human socialization space (Bookchin, 1995).

In the international sphere, the Second Conference of the United Nations onHuman Settlements, Habitat II, of 1996, reflected on the satisfaction of the needsand the impact of the human settlements in the environment, proposing institutionsand strategies. The urban environmental sustainability process in the Europeanambit started as a policy in 1990 with the Green book on urban environment,the letters of the European cities towards the sustainability of 1994, betterknown as La Carta d'Aalborg, to the informs on sustainable cities destinedto the local authorities (2005) and the Thematic strategy for the urbanenvironment of 2006, that show that the local sustainability is a process and thatthe concept of 'sustainable development' has been progressively concreting forthe urban environment to stop being an empty concept.

However, there is the question, if all the countries transferred the principlesof Rio, why it has not worked in the mega cities of the Third World as in the caseof Mexico City or Jakarta, which show situations of evident unsustainability intheir territory? In the Latin American world, the sustainability problem is linkedto the one on governability. Most of the big cities have crisis of social, politicaland environment governability problems. Short terms, the inadequate planning,centralization of decisions and resources, or the competitiveness understood asthe orientation to the economic growth, have prevented the crystallization of amodel compatible with the environment, with some rare exceptions. In somecases has occurred the salvation in the role of the technology, as in theatmospheric pollution problem, where the technical factor is decisive for itssolution, the problem rests on not considering it as part of a process, since thereare other determining factors in its solution, as the change of social attitudestowards mobility patterns and the consumption at home, or the production, thatare the ones that generate the air pollution problem (Luke, 2002).



The Latin American cities require of development strategies ad hoc theirpeculiarities. In Latin America, in contrast to the rest of the world, there are largenatural resources so that the base of their development could be in those and fromthat the academic proposals of sustainability (Leff, 2004) give more importanceto the environment; but not the governmental proposals that give the first placeto the economic development, as the case of some Asian countries. This doesnot impede, in the globalized world we live in, to test experiences that havealready been affective in societies with a more advanced environmentalconscience, or those from the Third World that were first focused on therestructuring of their cities with international help, given the grave urban-environmental crisis they were experiencing.

The construction of sustainable cities

We consider as adequate the use of expressions as "construction" or design ofsustainable cities" because it evokes the sociocultural perception on the city andits problematic, so that it is variable according to the countries; however, we candefine the minimum or common criterion. The sustainable city is that whichimplies being a livable place; no matter its dimensions; global, mega city,intermediate or small city.

So, with different approximations, but the livability axis, the green andsustainable cities are built, and different local authorities have been compromised,in both the design as in the impulse of this new kind of urban environment, beingable to transform in many cases, degraded environments into livable places, thatdemonstrates the fact that it is possible to reverse the urban environmentaldegradation.

The cities with European influence were conformed surrounding suburbs,and one of their functions was that of providing public spaces, living zones, greenzones, cultural spaces, that allowed the human being socialization. In Australia—with more availability of natural resources— have understood the importanceof including the environment and have designed their cities within the nature.Others, such as Seoul, have recovered from a grave degradation and pollutionprocess, which from being inhospitable and unlivable cities have understood thatthe competitiveness is not only economic any more, and implies pleasantenvironments also as investment engines. The called global cities, such as Tokyoor Hong Kong, thought as financial centers, present an urban landscape of

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skyscrapers and artificial environments, but they provide safety, which is anothercharacteristic of the livability, even that for many is the negation of the self andthe place (Fernández, 2000). This shows that the needs hierarchy, even more thesecondary ones, can vary according to the different cultures and temporalepochs, given priority to other aspects (efficient cities).

The governmental approximation

In the globalized world, the local and regional governments are looking for theinsertion in the benefits this offers, and in this way they design competitive citiesfocusing on the economic aspect. Even when there are technical documents ofinternational organisms that highlight the environmental aspects, the orientationhas a strong economic content.

The construction of a city with identity requires other factors to be includedand what nowadays is asked is for a city to be a livable, safe, just, of socializationplace that provides homogeneous life quality for the population. In this attempt,the governments are not only administrators of a territory, or have in their chargethe responsibility of the care of the environment, but also the promotion of thedevelopment, that is not only economic, but that makes reference to a conceptof integral development of the human being (Potter, 1990); are, now, regulatorsand promoters of the society. The latter has a fundamental role, that means itsparticipation, preferably active, this is, involved in the public tasks.

Nonetheless, the local governments have not designed their developmentstrategy well, or have stopped at the margin, "managing" without a congruentproject, mainly due to the lack of technical or financial capability for theirfaculties. And so, the Latin American cities, as Mexico City, are characterizedfor being "exclusive" (Balbó, 2003). The absence of planning with long termvision and the fragmented, partial and opportunist solutions, have led to a kind ofa city where is not excluded by poverty reasons, but of many aspects, cultural,political, social and environmental aspects. Not all the inhabitants participate inthe public services as water or electricity in equal conditions because theparticipative fees depend on the zones. But this is not exclusive of Mexico orLatin America, many cities have reached a ingovernability point with theconsequent deterioration of the quality of life, that many times is not even presentin the political agenda as an objective of the transformations that impulse; whichwould be then the sustainability criteria that would work for the orientation of theactions in urban spheres, mainly in Third World cities? In this article, it is our



intention is to mention these orienting criteria that allow establishing a test whendetermining the urban sustainability.

Sustainability criteriaQuality of life

The last objective of the design of every city must be providing a quality of lifeadequate for their inhabitants, overcoming the idea of modernity of the industrialstage, based solely on comfort economicist, of more consumption capacity andaccumulation of modern gadgets for the satisfaction of needs criteria, orientedto a ecologic modernization funded in the change of values.

This problem of access of all the citizens to improve their quality of life impliesto approach at least two facts: an equity problem regarding the distribution of thedistribution of the economic and environmental resources, and a conscienceproblem with post modern values.

The principle of social justice of the sustainable development implies thateverybody lives in a city they can enjoy in a more or less homogeneous way ofconditions related to the quality of life, this is, it should be allowed that thecondition of "citizens" that is attached to the city implies, more than a politicalacceptation, a participation of the benefits that generate in it, economic, social orenvironmental, overcoming the inequities among those who live in the centre andthose who live in the periphery. The problems of quality of life are present mainlyin the periphery and in the Third World suburbs. The quality of life impliesadequate environments, access to basic public services, green, public, cultural,recreational and spare areas that allow socialization.

Institutional changes

For a sustainable development proposal can be incorporated effectively in thepolicies, some structural reforms in the political, legal and social levels that allowimpelling the change. Besides a change of social values and attitudes regardingthe environment, we have to understand the current institutions, which can becontradictory with the approaches of social change proposed at a determinatetime —post-liberal (Eckersley, 1992), post-modernization (Inglehart,1997),reflexive modernization (Beck, 1994)— if a modification in the normativeand institutional schemes is not done.

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The governments and the institutions are very important social agents for theyare the ones in charge and legitimate for, to begin with, taking decisions accordingto the representative democracy system. The reality has demonstrated, however,that before the inefficacy, inaction or the excesses of the "legitimately" in chargeof the environmental protection, the civil society started to open spaces and thelegitimacy is linked now to the principle of affection, widening the spectrum ofsocial agents that intervene in the decision taking. The global environmentalproblems affect those who live in a different place where the risk is originated,"socializing" the latter, and not necessarily the benefits. The risk society (Beck,1994) obliges to modify the current comprehension of the institutions, since noteven the juridical forms, with their universal validity pretension, conserve thischaracter of permanence, generality or justice.

It is talked about the green State, of green cities or sustainable cities, to referto these changes that are not easy to establish due to the inertia of the economicdevelopment; besides, they imply the transition of a liberal State to a democraticgreen State (Eckersley, 2004). The liberal State favored the concentration of thedecision taking in few social actors, those with economic power, experts or in thegovernment, ignoring the society as a whole and alienating it from the decisiontaking. The environmental problematic, however, obliges to think again theconcepts of democracy and legitimacy in the internal and international spheres,due to the affection or the latent risks in an activity. It also implies to think oncemore in the concepts such as the sovereignty, affection by the global character,trans-border or transgenerational of some environmental problems.

Integral approaches

The sectorial or fragmented visions with which the urban policies are commonlyelaborated have provoked an inadequate urban management. The integrationhas to be done in to levels: in the first place, in the planning of urban developmentactivity. The urban planning implies the design that is wanted. The soil policy hasincidence in that of the dwelling, of transport and in the series of public urbanservices, so even if, by sectors is easier to approach a problem, it is not necessaryto loose the vision of conjunction that implies the environmental problematic. Forexample, the problem of the water is not only a waterworks and sewerage, butit interacts with the management of residuals (pollution of phreatic and aquiferousmantles), the atmospheric pollution or the soil policy, and has to do with an



approach of management by watersheds. In the second place, the calledintegration of the decisions, which implies the coordination of the competentauthorities and organs, is a critical point in the effectiveness of the policies andactions to protect the environment.

The diffusion of responsibilities and functions is provoked by the inadequateapproximation and sectorization of the urban problematic. The systemic approachthat allows knowing the interaction of the systems and sub-systems present inthe city favors this integration. The Agenda 21, proposal in the Summit of Rio,was elaborated with a systemic approach; it talks about the urban sustainabilitysubject, the principle of subsidiarity of the administrations and the closer to thecitizen performance.

The role of the local authority in the urban management

The urban environmental problematic is located spatially, that is the reason whythe urban management has to be done locally, although the highest levels of thegovernment act complementarily, attending the shared responsibility principle.1

the local or regional approximations are the adequate for solving the urbanproblematic and the local authorities play a very important role in the design ofthe sustainable cities. The urban problems are related to the way of living of thecitizens, with the ordering of the human settlements, with the planning of the soiluses, the transport, as well as the closest problems, such as the management ofresiduals, the water supply and the quality of the air or the need of public spaces.In Mexico, with a centralizer tradition, the function of the local authorize has beenunderestimated, attracting the functions to higher levels to make more efficientthe governmental performance, but not all the functions must be done by thenational authorities or by the government exclusively.

1 In Mexico, from the Secretaría de Medio Ambiente, Recursos Naturales y Pesca (Semarnat, Ministryof Environment, Natural Resources and Fishing, federal level) content is being given to the urbansustainability, where authorities such as the Procuraduría Federal de Protección al Ambiente (Profepa,Federal Ministry of the Environment Protection, doubtfully in competence for such task) certifies themunicipalities' environmental performance. These actions are done without the participation of themunicipalities, which very probably can lead to the failure of this kind of urban policies. On the otherhand, some cities with more capacity, implement their own local agendas. The emphasis in the federalperformance must be in the design of documents and strategies that allow changing the technicaldeficiency of those local entities with less capacity.

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The article 115 of the General Constitution of the United States of Mexicoestablishes that the municipalities are the base of the territorial, political andadministrative organization, with juridical personality and autonomy to managetheir patrimony; they have the regulatory jurisdiction to regulate "their matters"and guarantee the "civil and local" participation. The functions they perform andthe public services under their charge are those that directly affect the life of thecitizens:

1. Potable water, drainage, sewerage, treatment and disposition of residualwaters.

2. Public lightning.3. Garbage removal, recollection, transfer, treatment and final disposition

of wastes.4. Markets and supply centers.5. Cemeteries.6. Slaughter houses.7. Streets, parks and gardens and their equipment.8. Public security, in the terms of the article 21 of the Constitution;

municipal preventive police and transit.9. The others the local Legislatures determine according the territorial and

socioeconomic conditions.

But also have the important functions of zonification and planning of themunicipal urban development, the participation in the creation and administrationof territorial reserves, in the formulation of regional development plans, in theintervention of in the regularization of the land ownership, in the creation ofecologic reserves and order programs, in the public transport plans, and in theauthorization, control and vigilance of the use of the soil. With these powers, thesolution of the environmental problems depends in a great extent to theirperformance. Now, due to technical or capacity reasons they do not exercisethem, or financial, because even if there is a constitutional guarantee, if there isnot an effective transference of resources to afford these attributions, they aredead script. This is a problem of effective decentralization (Westendorff, 2000).

If there is not a coordination and cooperation with other governmental levels,the mere constitutional attribution is not enough. Even if the city councils canexercise acts within their territory, the planning can also be at a regional level,following the criterion of efficiency of the administrative performance, but



always from these local instances, through regional or metropolitan coordinationfigures; so that there is not a decided process from the top, from the stategovernments of the federal government. This means that the municipalities mustassume their constitutional attributions and to coordinate regionally,2 so that theexception is the exercise of a higher level when the goals can only be reachedby means of the intervention of other government levels (subsidiarity principle)

The urban-environmental planning

The urban planning has been at the margin of the environmental, being functionsof different organisms and dependencies, even when the plans include thereference to the coordination, there are still some de-coordinated performancesto be seen. In the environment subjects, the integral perspective cannot be leftaside, (theory of the ecosystems and postulates of the ecology), the sectorial andregional plannings can be more effective, but they have to be effectivelycoordinated, even when it is about a specific problem.

The sustainability is not understood in the same way in the different culturalspheres; at the same time, the specific characteristics of a territory are different,so that the urban-environmental development programs solve specific problems.So, many of the urban plans focus their sustainability objectives on the regenerationof degraded zones or the recovery of public spaces and green zones, when thesehave been abandoned. Examples of this constitute the Revitalization StrategicPlan of Bilbao, the transformation of some forgotten and dangerous zones ofValence or the recovery of the Seoul natural surroundings. In Third World cities,the social pressure is strong and is tightly liked to the territorial occupation andthe services the environment provides, there are also the environmental degradationproblems that are approached when they are too notorious. The urban sustainabilitydevelopment strategies, therefore, are different in different contexts.

Further the coordination, which is a recurrent subject in the urban studies, theurban planning has to keep in mind the issues of gender equity, adjusting thespaces, activities, transportation, in sum, the functioning of the city, to the needs

2 For example, the Secretaría de Desarrollo Social from the Mexican federal government (Sedesol,Ministry of social development, in charge of the management of the Habitat program) promotes aregional development and the re-ordering of the territory with this goal. As federal dependence, it hasmore resources and planning competence, but it does not monopolize the execution, according to whatwas exposed. Which is the participation of the municipalities in this planning of their spaces? Thehigher levels of the government (state or federal) must guarantee a context that allows thesemunicipalities to exercise their faculties and strengthen their local performance.

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of a large part of the population, as women and immigrants (foreign and national),for whom development opportunities and mobility should be offered; in a way thatin this efficiency are included the social justice criteria.

Another of the aspects to be considered in the city planning must be thevulnerability before the risks generated in the city or the global ones that affectit, avoiding future social and environmental disasters. In Mexico, a fifth part ofthe population live in high zones in danger of floods and in the centre zone of thecountry is concentrated a large part of the human settlements and the economicactivities. Mexico City's periphery is a zone of high social and environmentalvulnerability, it presents problems associated to the climatic variations such aslandslides, floods or shortage of water supply, many of these urban areas areabove aquiferous mantles, with a pollution potentiality; but also there is aninterrelation with the rural zones. All these factors must be included in theterritorial, urban and urban planning with an integrated perspective, and notthrough three different and not coordinated planning. It is a reality that the soilpolicy is not far from the environmental policies.

Participative processes

A democratic State implies the participative decision taking. Nowadays, theintegration of the environment in the policies, the decision taking, in the daily life,obliges to the change of many of the normative categories, of the State functions,of the consideration of the civil society, of the role of the private initiative andfurther the representative democracy, start to emerge demands for moreinclusion, experiences of environmental management that are not exclusivelydone by the administration and the need of a re-proposal of the modernity, of theinstitutional and juridical schemes and the social performance.

Concepts such as 'participation', 'information' or 'democracy' take validityand new concepts such as 'governing', which has allowed articulating thelegitimacy with the decision taking, making it rest on the consensus of the socialagents. So, 'environmental governing' (Eckersley, 2004) refers to a participativegovernment system, that in the social sphere find a fertile soil since its own spatialdimension refers to those aspects that directly affect the citizens and the reasonwhy they feel motivated to demand this participation.

The environment governing is congruent with the recognition of the citizenshipstatus, understood as the quality of the people of participating in the public life orissues, that interest them (Rubin, 2002) and in the way these construct an image



of the city (Cuervo, 2005). So that that is it refers to the existence of participativespaces and of consensus and accepted decisions by its addressees.

The democratic principle implies the decentralization of the decision takingtowards a level that is more efficient in the achievement o the urban sustainability(subsidiarity) and the participation of all the directly or potentially affected,locating here the legitimacy (effective exercise of the citizenship).

We have to keep in mind that in order to being able to participate there mustbe previous conditions that allow it, such as reliable, complete, systematizedinformation and to guarantee the access to it with demanding and responsibilitymechanism, so that a change is generated in the individual and social conscience.The participation is not reduced to expressing previous opinions that can beconsidered or not by those who take the decisions, rather, to participate in thedecision taking implies a transit from a representative democracy to a participativeand deliberative democracy, or agreement and acceptance from the largesnumber of affected or involved people.

If there is not a local government facilitator or promoter of the civilianparticipation, this participation can be presented as an anomaly or a demandbefore the lack of participative spaces (social movements). The reflexiveparticipation is oriented to this participation to be a normal process, and as it wasmentioned in previous lines, previous institutional reforms are necessary thatguarantee the right to the environmental information in order to practice the civilrights.

Cultural and social changes

The cultural and social factors have been decisive elements in the configurationof the sustainable cities; they had to do with the orientation of the modernistvalues towards different behavior or consumption guides, more respectful withthe environment. The progress, development and competitiveness notions haveto take other characteristics because a city can be competitive and attractive forthe investment, and not necessarily due to economic reasons —which is one ofthe existential reasons of the city— there is no need of focusing in the economicproduction linked to the use of natural resources. The promotion of the scienceand the technology has represented and alternative, what now is at stake is notonly the attraction of industries, but of international events or another kind ofprofitable activities, that demand other criteria, such as public spaces, greenareas, cultural spaces, farther the economic competitiveness considerations.

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The conformation of an urban ecologic conscience that modifies the currenthuman-nature and city-nature relation (Magnaghten and Urry, 1998), as part ofa global world, must be another of the goals of the urban sustainability (Castells,1998). These are common proposals from the sustainable development approachas from the deep ecology, even if the former is implies the satisfactions of humanneeds as a previous step that allows worrying of another kind of more existentialneeds, and in the latter there can be seen egocentric characteristics, placing menas one more species within the ecosystem; both imply the existential questionsof "who am I" and "where am I going" of the human being, whose responses areoutlined from the values and demands that the city where they want or would liketo live imposes (Gore, 1993).

Since the city is considered as a shared experience, it was emphasized in theexistence of common interests that are determinant and that limit or condition theurban change. The values are considered as post-modernist. The post-modernityis understood as that modernity that has a critical view of itself (Brand andThomas, 2005), in which three aspects are object of criticism: the idea ofrationality, particularly the instrumental rationality from the scientific point ofview; the idea of history as a lineal and coherent development of the civilization,with Eurocentric postulates, and the idea of progress funded in the trust of therational action of the society as producer, by itself, of welfare and self-realization,so that rejects explanations with global validity, at the same time that debates thesubjects of the diversity, difference and discontinuity.

The absence of this ontological safety Giddens (1990) talks about, that putsthe human being in uncertainty and distrust situations regarding a world that hecontrols no more, makes the inhabitants of the modern world vulnerable; and thecities, these spaces where they live, stop giving that safety (Beck, 1996) as aconsequence of the industrialization. That is why, the sustainable city is thatwhich is livable and allows the integral development of the human being.

Conclusion: the sustainable city guarantees theinclusivity

Whether it is accepted a vision of the sustainable development, of bio-regionalismor those visions with more ecocentric orientations, the city is in a sustainabilityconstruction process, that is looking for the social and individual integraldevelopment, besides the economic one. The city is not a mere centre for the



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