The Production of Urban Environmental Policy in Brazil

Abstract

This article points out the emergence and evolution of urban environmental policy in Brazil. This agenda has increased in the last decades of the twentieth century due to the intense urbanization and population growth in the urban areas. This study aims to discuss urban sustainable perspectives and sustainable policies approaches to adaptation. From a scale perspective, focuses on how international and national urban policies have highlighted issues on social processes and the reduction of existing inequalities. In this sense, much has been legislated since the institutional sectors have been aware of public environmental policies. However, the question still remains of the extent to which the various sectors of society have an effective role on policy design and consolidation. The methodology is based on a hypothetical-deductive perspective performed through a literature review and a documental analysis. Therefore, a state of artabout national urban historical context was carried out, observing the inclusion of the theme in the Constitutional Text, its specification with the promulgation of the Statute of Cities and the expansion of municipal competences aiming an urban law enforcement. The analysis of urban environmental policy reveals the profusion of practices aimed at inserting the cities or even putting them in a ranking of results that attend to certain sectors and social actors, thus resulting on an environmentality.