Environment and urban sustainability (1)

The meaning of the sustainable development

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

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

The decade of 1970 starts with clear samples of this conceptual maturity that allows the environmental to emerge within the grand worries of the modern industrial society. Testimony of that is given by the Stockholm Summit on Human Environment as a series of publications that, directly or indirectly, put the environmental in the centre of the preoccupations. In this sense, we can mention works such as Blueprint for survival by Edward Goldsmith et al. (1972), The population 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 by Schumacher (1973). All of them, with different emphasis, under different premises and following their own analytical objectives, give place to a sort of a wider social initiation and recognition to the environmental problematic, introducing it in the more general context of the contradictions and central crises of the modern industrial society. At the same time, in the very ecology field, there is a philosophical, political and social reflection that shapes something that has been called political ecology, field where, under different perspectives, most of the constestatary trends start the most comprehensive and general critic of the industrial society and their relation with their natural world. Even when the different authors who form this environmental thinking current are differenced by centering the objective of their worries on the man-nature relation in the human being and their welfare (antropocentrist) or in asserting the nature as a value in itself (ecocentrist), they have in common to criticize the excesses of the industrial society, their developing logic, their support to consumption and the reduction of nature to mere raw materials, consumables for the production or natural 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 way constitutes the consolidation and predomination of the ideas of the first movement described and the margination, at least in the social discourse, of the more radical proposals of the political ecology. The discourse of the sustainable development dominates, since the mid 1980's the governmental public policy, and has become in the common language that has made possible the interlocution between the different actors, institutions, agencies that are in charge of the environmental field.

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The most notorious consequence of this fact has been the concentration of the intellectual and governmental effort in the search of mechanisms, instruments and strategies to conciliate the traditional economic development with the environment. This is what authors such, as Hajer (1995) have called the ecological modernization , from which the sustainable development is the most detailed example. Under its principles, the damage and environmental crisis, that in the political ecology discourse are consubstantial to the deployment of the modern industrial society, appear as distortions that can be dealt with, administered and controlled by the science, the technology and the institutions of the modern society. The utilitarian, productivist and consumist conception of the nature remains intact and the sustainability discourse becomes preservationist, conversationalist and administrative proposals, where the environmental problems that the public policy is in charge of are constructed as pollution problems, of excesses that must and can be controlled, as well of predictable and correctible failures in the functioning of the institutions.

The sustainable development, which is the predominant approach in the present in the academy, government and non-governmental groups, was first planted as a problem related to the environment's charge capacity (limits to growth ) and has evolved in some regions until meaning the disconnection of the economic development of the usage of the natural resources (IV Environmental Program of the European Union). On the other hand, nowadays there is also make reference to other sustainability that must accompany that former one when the emphasis seemed to be focused on the maintenance and reproduction of nature, considered in that context as a natural capital. The idea of the sustainable development emerges from the recognition and proposes at the same time the need of the social system. The recognition consists on accepting and being conscious that the development model of the modern industrial society (capitalist or socialist) has reached certain limits that propose the viability problems in the future. The industrial modern societies cannot continue with the same ecological logic, with the same natural resources exploitation rhythm of the and 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 a whole, of giving it continuity, is by the rationalization of their premises and the behaviors that derive from them. The works previously mentioned have in common the fact of proposing the need of looking for a different rationality for the new modernity stage that emerges in the modern world. It is not about refunding but of refunctionalizing the modern society to make congruent three

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tendencies that, when dephasing and pursuing separate goals, they have led to

a 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 an environmental crisis: the economic development, the environment and the population. It was this need of conciliation, of refunctionalization and administration of the environmental crisis within the logic of the mentioned ecological modernization, what led to the proposals of sustainable development.

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

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

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

The sustainable development makes compatible the economic and social development with the protection to the environment, others recognize that even if they are more utopian orientations, are necessary as proposals of an alternative development to the ruling model in the search of an ecologically responsible society (De Geus, 1999). All of them, however, imply a change of attitudes and social and cultural values, that are orientated towards what has been called the post-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 the bio-regionalism, with a more egocentric perspective (Eckersley, 1992), an interesting 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 more application 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 strong positive impact for the environment. Although we have to admit that it meets the limitation 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 social reproduction, 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 the nature, more than the conquest and competition attitudes (Atkinson, 1992), and implies that acknowledgment of traditional practices, constituting an approach different from life planning and organization. Then, the bio-regions are the product of the interaction between culture and nature. For Gudynas (2002) the bioregions are "geographical spaces where there are homogeneous characters from the ecological point of view, with strong links between the human populations and complementarities and similitudes in the human uses that are made from these ecosystems", but also is a cultural constitution —according to Berg— 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 different conscience. Results an interesting alternative because it implies substantive changes in the way to sustainability (Campell, 1996) giving it the character of method within this process (Berg, 2005). The idea of an environmental arrangement by watersheds is congruent with this way of approaching the environmental problematic.

The urban environment sustainability

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

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The econsystematic approach sees the city as a series of systems that interact among themselves and that are interdependent. The systematic perspective allows the understanding of the interaction among the environmental systems, the human systems and the constructed systems (Young, 1994) more adequate to the current functioning of the man-nature relation and the modifications it had suffered; 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 the Agenda 21 , and is the one that prevails in the approximations of the European Union to the urban problematic in the design of sustainable cities.

To talk about urban sustainability we have to refer to the three dimensions that integrate the principle: the social, the economic and the environmental. It does not have a uniform meaning, but, on the contrary, it varies according to the urban environment 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 characteristics and social or economic conditions, acknowledging that not all the cities have the same problems.

The environmental sustainability, however, should have a privileged place since it constitutes the support for the other two dimension of the sustainable development concept. The development processes that only favor the economic or social aspects have led to the depletion and degradation of the natural resources and to the anthropogenic pressure, each time stronger, demanded from them, as raw material or environmental services.

The different national or international informs show that we live in an urbanized world (75 percent of the world population lives in cities) and that in the Third World there are urbanization phenomena of the poverty due to the large migrations from the rural to the urban spheres since the cities concentrate the most profitable economic activities. This fact brings along a strong demographic pressure on the natural resources and the increasing demand for human satisfactors and raw material, reaching to unsustainability situations and of high dependence of the city to distant environments (Castells and Borja, 1997). It is not surprising, then, that the worries of environmental nature are one of the more important reflections on the future cities.

For Satterthwaite (1988), the urban reflection on the sustainability has weakened the importance of the biodiversity conservation and the perception that the city is separated from the natural processes still prevails and it is revealed in the ways of fragmented urban managements. The idea of the XIX of the man separated 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 environmentalist trends not only for environmental protections matters, but of coherence with the adequate environment necessary for the development of the human being. The instrumental vision that prevails, not only in the design of policies but also in the social perception, requires a reorientation and re-planning on what was constructed (Inoguchi et al., 1999). It also implies creative processes that have in mind the diversity and the capacity (Carta de Aalborg) changing the orientation of the function of the city to its origins of human socialization space (Bookchin, 1995).

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

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

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The Latin American cities require of development strategies ad hoc their peculiarities. In Latin America, in contrast to the rest of the world, there are large natural resources so that the base of their development could be in those and from that the academic proposals of sustainability (Leff, 2004) give more importance to the environment; but not the governmental proposals that give the first place to the economic development, as the case of some Asian countries. This does not impede, in the globalized world we live in, to test experiences that have already been affective in societies with a more advanced environmental conscience, or those from the Third World that were first focused on the restructuring 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 of

sustainable cities" because it evokes the sociocultural perception on the city and its problematic, so that it is variable according to the countries; however, we can define the minimum or common criterion. The sustainable city is that which implies 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 and sustainable 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, being able to transform in many cases, degraded environments into livable places, that demonstrates the fact that it is possible to reverse the urban environmental degradation.

The cities with European influence were conformed surrounding suburbs, and one of their functions was that of providing public spaces, living zones, green zones, cultural spaces, that allowed the human being socialization. In Australia —with more availability of natural resources— have understood the importance of including the environment and have designed their cities within the nature. Others, such as Seoul, have recovered from a grave degradation and pollution process, which from being inhospitable and unlivable cities have understood that the competitiveness is not only economic any more, and implies pleasant environments also as investment engines. The called global cities, such as Tokyo or 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 another characteristic of the livability, even that for many is the negation of the self and the place (Fernández, 2000). This shows that the needs hierarchy, even more the secondary ones, can vary according to the different cultures and temporal epochs, given priority to other aspects (efficient cities).

The governmental approximation In the globalized world, the local and regional governments are looking for the

insertion in the benefits this offers, and in this way they design competitive cities focusing on the economic aspect. Even when there are technical documents of international organisms that highlight the environmental aspects, the orientation has a strong economic content.

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

Nonetheless, the local governments have not designed their development strategy well, or have stopped at the margin, "managing" without a congruent project, mainly due to the lack of technical or financial capability for their faculties. And so, the Latin American cities, as Mexico City, are characterized for being "exclusive" (Balbó, 2003). The absence of planning with long term vision and the fragmented, partial and opportunist solutions, have led to a kind of

a city where is not excluded by poverty reasons, but of many aspects, cultural, political, social and environmental aspects. Not all the inhabitants participate in the public services as water or electricity in equal conditions because the participative fees depend on the zones. But this is not exclusive of Mexico or Latin America, many cities have reached a ingovernability point with the consequent deterioration of the quality of life, that many times is not even present in the political agenda as an objective of the transformations that impulse; which would be then the sustainability criteria that would work for the orientation of the actions in urban spheres, mainly in Third World cities? In this article, it is our

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

Sustainability criteria

Quality of life The last objective of the design of every city must be providing a quality of life

adequate for their inhabitants, overcoming the idea of modernity of the industrial stage, based solely on comfort economicist, of more consumption capacity and accumulation of modern gadgets for the satisfaction of needs criteria, oriented to a ecologic modernization funded in the change of values.

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

The principle of social justice of the sustainable development implies that everybody lives in a city they can enjoy in a more or less homogeneous way of conditions related to the quality of life, this is, it should be allowed that the condition of "citizens" that is attached to the city implies, more than a political acceptation, a participation of the benefits that generate in it, economic, social or environmental, overcoming the inequities among those who live in the centre and those who live in the periphery. The problems of quality of life are present mainly in the periphery and in the Third World suburbs. The quality of life implies adequate 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 the

policies, some structural reforms in the political, legal and social levels that allow impelling the change. Besides a change of social values and attitudes regarding

the environment, we have to understand the current institutions, which can be contradictory with the approaches of social change proposed at a determinate time —post-liberal (Eckersley, 1992), post-modernization (Inglehart, 1997),reflexive modernization (Beck, 1994)— if a modification in the normative and institutional schemes is not done.

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The governments and the institutions are very important social agents for they are the ones in charge and legitimate for, to begin with, taking decisions according to the representative democracy system. The reality has demonstrated, however, that before the inefficacy, inaction or the excesses of the "legitimately" in charge of the environmental protection, the civil society started to open spaces and the legitimacy is linked now to the principle of affection, widening the spectrum of social agents that intervene in the decision taking. The global environmental problems 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 not even the juridical forms, with their universal validity pretension, conserve this character of permanence, generality or justice.

It is talked about the green State, of green cities or sustainable cities, to refer to these changes that are not easy to establish due to the inertia of the economic development; besides, they imply the transition of a liberal State to a democratic green State (Eckersley, 2004). The liberal State favored the concentration of the decision taking in few social actors, those with economic power, experts or in the government, ignoring the society as a whole and alienating it from the decision taking. The environmental problematic, however, obliges to think again the concepts 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 once more 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 commonly

elaborated have provoked an inadequate urban management. The integration has to be done in to levels: in the first place, in the planning of urban development activity. The urban planning implies the design that is wanted. The soil policy has incidence in that of the dwelling, of transport and in the series of public urban services, so even if, by sectors is easier to approach a problem, it is not necessary to loose the vision of conjunction that implies the environmental problematic. For example, the problem of the water is not only a waterworks and sewerage, but it interacts with the management of residuals (pollution of phreatic and aquiferous mantles), the atmospheric pollution or the soil policy, and has to do with an

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approach of management by watersheds. In the second place, the called integration of the decisions, which implies the coordination of the competent authorities and organs, is a critical point in the effectiveness of the policies and actions to protect the environment.

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

The role of the local authority in the urban management The urban environmental problematic is located spatially, that is the reason why

the urban management has to be done locally, although the highest levels of the government act complementarily, attending the shared responsibility principle. 1 the local or regional approximations are the adequate for solving the urban problematic and the local authorities play a very important role in the design of the sustainable cities. The urban problems are related to the way of living of the citizens, with the ordering of the human settlements, with the planning of the soil uses, the transport, as well as the closest problems, such as the management of residuals, 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 been underestimated, attracting the functions to higher levels to make more efficient the governmental performance, but not all the functions must be done by the national authorities or by the government exclusively.

1 In Mexico, from the Secretaría de Medio Ambiente, Recursos Naturales y Pesca (Semarnat, Ministry of Environment, Natural Resources and Fishing , federal level) content is being given to the urban

sustainability, 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 the municipalities' environmental performance. These actions are done without the participation of the municipalities, which very probably can lead to the failure of this kind of urban policies. On the other hand, some cities with more capacity, implement their own local agendas. The emphasis in the federal performance must be in the design of documents and strategies that allow changing the technical deficiency of those local entities with less capacity.

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

1. Potable water, drainage, sewerage, treatment and disposition of residual waters.

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 the municipal urban development, the participation in the creation and administration of territorial reserves, in the formulation of regional development plans, in the intervention of in the regularization of the land ownership, in the creation of ecologic reserves and order programs, in the public transport plans, and in the authorization, control and vigilance of the use of the soil. With these powers, the solution of the environmental problems depends in a great extent to their performance. Now, due to technical or capacity reasons they do not exercise them, or financial, because even if there is a constitutional guarantee, if there is not an effective transference of resources to afford these attributions, they are dead 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 can exercise acts within their territory, the planning can also be at a regional level, following the criterion of efficiency of the administrative performance, but

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always from these local instances, through regional or metropolitan coordination figures; so that there is not a decided process from the top, from the state governments of the federal government. This means that the municipalities must

assume their constitutional attributions and to coordinate regionally, 2 so that the exception is the exercise of a higher level when the goals can only be reached by 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 functions

of different organisms and dependencies, even when the plans include the reference to the coordination, there are still some de-coordinated performances to be seen. In the environment subjects, the integral perspective cannot be left aside, (theory of the ecosystems and postulates of the ecology), the sectorial and regional plannings can be more effective, but they have to be effectively coordinated, even when it is about a specific problem.

The sustainability is not understood in the same way in the different cultural spheres; 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 regeneration of degraded zones or the recovery of public spaces and green zones, when these have been abandoned. Examples of this constitute the Revitalization Strategic Plan of Bilbao, the transformation of some forgotten and dangerous zones of Valence 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 and the services the environment provides, there are also the environmental degradation problems that are approached when they are too notorious. The urban sustainability development strategies, therefore, are different in different contexts.

Further the coordination, which is a recurrent subject in the urban studies, the urban planning has to keep in mind the issues of gender equity, adjusting the spaces, 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 a

regional development and the re-ordering of the territory with this goal. As federal dependence, it has more resources and planning competence, but it does not monopolize the execution, according to what was exposed. Which is the participation of the municipalities in this planning of their spaces? The higher levels of the government (state or federal) must guarantee a context that allows these municipalities 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 that in this efficiency are included the social justice criteria.

Another of the aspects to be considered in the city planning must be the vulnerability before the risks generated in the city or the global ones that affect it, avoiding future social and environmental disasters. In Mexico, a fifth part of the population live in high zones in danger of floods and in the centre zone of the country is concentrated a large part of the human settlements and the economic activities. Mexico City's periphery is a zone of high social and environmental vulnerability, it presents problems associated to the climatic variations such as landslides, floods or shortage of water supply, many of these urban areas are above aquiferous mantles, with a pollution potentiality; but also there is an interrelation with the rural zones. All these factors must be included in the territorial, urban and urban planning with an integrated perspective, and not through three different and not coordinated planning. It is a reality that the soil policy is not far from the environmental policies.

Participative processes

A democratic State implies the participative decision taking. Nowadays, the integration 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 and further the representative democracy, start to emerge demands for more inclusion, experiences of environmental management that are not exclusively done by the administration and the need of a re-proposal of the modernity, of the institutional and juridical schemes and the social performance.

Concepts such as 'participation', 'information' or 'democracy' take validity and new concepts such as 'governing', which has allowed articulating the legitimacy with the decision taking, making it rest on the consensus of the social agents. So, 'environmental governing' (Eckersley, 2004) refers to a participative government system, that in the social sphere find a fertile soil since its own spatial dimension refers to those aspects that directly affect the citizens and the reason why they feel motivated to demand this participation.

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

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

The democratic principle implies the decentralization of the decision taking towards 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 must

be previous conditions that allow it, such as reliable, complete, systematized information and to guarantee the access to it with demanding and responsibility mechanism, so that a change is generated in the individual and social conscience. The participation is not reduced to expressing previous opinions that can be considered or not by those who take the decisions, rather, to participate in the decision taking implies a transit from a representative democracy to a participative and deliberative democracy, or agreement and acceptance from the larges number of affected or involved people.

If there is not a local government facilitator or promoter of the civilian participation, this participation can be presented as an anomaly or a demand before the lack of participative spaces (social movements). The reflexive participation is oriented to this participation to be a normal process, and as it was mentioned in previous lines, previous institutional reforms are necessary that guarantee the right to the environmental information in order to practice the civil rights.

Cultural and social changes The cultural and social factors have been decisive elements in the configuration

of the sustainable cities; they had to do with the orientation of the modernist values towards different behavior or consumption guides, more respectful with the environment. The progress, development and competitiveness notions have to take other characteristics because a city can be competitive and attractive for the investment, and not necessarily due to economic reasons —which is one of the existential reasons of the city— there is no need of focusing in the economic production linked to the use of natural resources. The promotion of the science and the technology has represented and alternative, what now is at stake is not only the attraction of industries, but of international events or another kind of profitable activities, that demand other criteria, such as public spaces, green areas, cultural spaces, farther the economic competitiveness considerations.

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The conformation of an urban ecologic conscience that modifies the current human-nature and city-nature relation (Magnaghten and Urry, 1998), as part of

a global world, must be another of the goals of the urban sustainability (Castells, 1998). These are common proposals from the sustainable development approach as from the deep ecology, even if the former is implies the satisfactions of human needs as a previous step that allows worrying of another kind of more existential needs, and in the latter there can be seen egocentric characteristics, placing men as one more species within the ecosystem; both imply the existential questions of "who am I" and "where am I going" of the human being, whose responses are outlined from the values and demands that the city where they want or would like to live imposes (Gore, 1993).

Since the city is considered as a shared experience, it was emphasized in the existence of common interests that are determinant and that limit or condition the urban change. The values are considered as post-modernist. The post-modernity is understood as that modernity that has a critical view of itself (Brand and Thomas, 2005), in which three aspects are object of criticism: the idea of rationality, particularly the instrumental rationality from the scientific point of view; 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 the rational 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 the subjects of the diversity, difference and discontinuity.

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

Conclusion: the sustainable city guarantees the inclusivity

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

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exchange of goods and services, or activity or human beings concentrator space. The effective integration of the environmental considerations allows more human spaces, a wider social development, an exposition from the social point of view, the reconstitution of the nature by the change of collective and individual consumption patterns, and a more harmonic economic development with the environment.

For the Program Habitat II of 2000, the 'inclusive city' is the place where anyone, no matter the economic condition, gender, age, race or religion, can allow him or herself participate productively and positively in the opportunities the city has to offer; so that that it is comprehensive of all the factors that take place in it, including a democratic access to the power sources and decision taking. From here derive the proposals of sustainable transport or urbanism, the consideration of efficient, competitive or sustainable cities. The latter qualifying adjective is comprehensive of the previous ones and becomes in those urban management plans that incorporate a social model of city from its physical and environmental characteristics.

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