Desenvolvimento sustentável e planejamento urbano: discursos, práticas, e (falsos) antagonismos

Abstract

Many speeches advocate a difficulty in thinking interfaces and (in)congruence between urban planning and sustainable development. On the one hand, there is the city as a maximum expression what is artificialized and thus antithesis of nature preservation. On the other, there is the argument that sees in the urban space, the locus of expressions of ideas and solutions to situations of conflicts (inherent in this space) - among them, the one that will be treated here: between environmental preservation and development of cities (and more specifically, the right to adequate housing). Thus, we proposed a discussion about some of the notions that support the urban and environmental planning today; such as progress, development, environment and sustainability. These notions are not "natural" or objective: they are social constructions, differently appropriated or evoked by the different social actors. Thus, it was shown how the use of these notions, institutionalized or not, carry different ways of thinking (and implement) the city and the environment. It has also been shown as sometimes there is actually a "false conflict", disguised by the "greening" of discourse, where the right to housing (especially for the poorest layers of society) would be an obstacle to environmental preservation.