Naturalism and biological conception of cities in the constitution of the idea of urban environment / Naturalismo e biologização das cidades na constituição da idéia de meio ambiente urbano

AUTOR(ES)
DATA DE PUBLICAÇÃO

2005

RESUMO

In this dissertation the formulation of a concept of ‘urban environment’ is based on the perspective of ideas which have historically attempted to understand cites in biological terms, such as “body”, “organism” or more recently “eco-system”. This tendency to ‘naturalize’ or conceive cities in biological terms has been a characteristic of social thinking especially since the 19th century. The roots of this tendency are certainly much more remote but this perspective did receive an important impulse from the mid-18th century ideas of the enlightenment. The following dissertation attempts to recuperate some of the more important aspects of this history, questioning the validity of this tendency for the comprehension of and intervention in contemporary cities. Because of this, the study is dedicated to the investigation of the various understandings attributed to the idea of nature with their peculiar appreciation of human agency and of the city. Qualifying this process of naturalization is seen as part of a wider preoccupation of negating or disciplining notions of ‘the artificial’ seen as the product of human agency, and of ‘chance’ when seen as the absence of causality or finality, in our constitution and interpretation of the world which in very many cases becomes an apology in favor of the ‘status quo’. Since the influence of ideas based on hygiene and sanitary conditions in the 19th century and the Darwinian twin conceptions of ecology and the controversial idea of eugenics (up to the mid 20th century) urban history has accepted the expanding role of biological metaphors. This has been expressive both in the biomedical sciences and also in the evolving science of urbanism. In many senses this has been part of the wider tendency towards domination by technical knowledge which is a recurrent feature of capitalist modernity. In this interpretation the dissertation attempts to show that ‘nature’, just as much as ordinary common people are conceived as resources, ‘naturally’ passive, without any capacity to create and with a mere capacity to ‘resist’, to ‘react’ or to ‘conform’ to their eventual ‘protection’. It is this academic paradigm of domination which needs to be recognized and confronted. In this sense the dissertation is an attempt to historically politicize the environmental question, especially in its urban dimension.

ASSUNTO(S)

history of biology urban ecology natureza ecologia urbana teoria do planejamento urbano urban planning theory nature história da ecologia ideologia história da biologia ideology urban environment history of ecology meio ambiente urbano

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