Environmental variables for urban planning

Summary

Offering a sequenced alternative for an urban planning, contemplating environmental variables, based on a systematized sequence is a necessity, for its execution before an identified group, whose objective is to reduce skepticism in the population, a challenge that is intended to be satisfied with this methodology proposal. In this article, the environmental variables required in urban planning are disclosed, based on their importance through the use of the skepticist current.

Introduction

This article aims to describe the state of the natural, social and economic components of the area to be ordered; considering conceptual concerns, activities and products that allow its application in the future, it intends to cover the issue of environmental variables for ordering.

Variable concept

For environmental variables for urban planning, the concept of variable; Ramírez (1999), raises it as the characteristic representation that varies between individuals acquiring different values, so it is a quality susceptible to change Álvarez, W. (2008).

Examples for easy interpretation.

Variable: Sex. Values: Woman, Man.

Variable: Age. Values: 0, 1, 2, 3…

Variable: Annual Income. Values: any number between 0 and hundreds of thousands or millions.

The variables take different approaches as mentioned by Álvarez (2008); classifies the types of variables of an investigation, in; independent, dependent and intervening; considering that the Independent Variable basically refers to where the researcher manipulates certain effects; in other words, it supposes the cause of the phenomenon studied, it is what is controlled or carried out. The Dependent Variable, implies the effect produced by the independent variable, represents what is to be determined directly in the investigation, it is altered when there are changes or variations in the independent variable. The Intervening Variable is the one that influences the dependent, but is not subject to consideration as a research variable; theoretically they affect dependents, but they are not measured or manipulated,for being unspecific.

Álvarez (2008) explains that the variables are distinguished in different ways and depends on the types of values that they take.

The indicator concept comes from the Latin verb indicate, which means to reveal, to point out. And applied to sustainability, it is the parameter that provides information on the state of the society-nature relationship.

Indicators are defined as variables endowed with meanings, derived from their own scientific configuration, which synthetically reflect a social interest in the environment that can be consistently included in the decision-making process (Rueda, 1999).

Ecological zoning

Before, the situation lent itself to obtaining resources in a simpler way, not so contaminated, a higher health index was bet compared to today, therefore, a series of programs have emerged, instruments that focus on the environmental study.

Negrete and Bocco (2009) mention ecological zoning as an instrument of environmental policy designed to characterize, diagnose and propose ways of using the territory and its natural resources, under the rational use approach.

In Mexico the legal definition comes from the General Law of Ecological Balance and Environmental Protection (LGEEPA), which considers it as; the planning process aimed at evaluating and programming the use of the land and the management of natural resources in the national territory and the areas over which the nation exercises its sovereignty and jurisdiction, to preserve and restore ecological balance and protect the environment.

To make this concept effective, it is necessary to know the aspects that have fed this way of conceiving the integral management of natural resources, for the benefit of the society that takes advantage of and uses them, and for environmental and ecological protection, preserving the elements for the future use or exploitation.

The ecological order has been defined based on the experience of other countries, and has been conformed to the integration of concepts that come from different scientific branches. It basically has two theoretical and methodological sources.

a) Territorial organization. It feeds on the conceptions of engineering and architectural planning where the key point is the plan, the spatial location of the activities. At the beginning, the so-called work projects took into account the favorable conditions for construction, to settle the property, the industry, the housing unit; the choice of the site was made due to favorable conditions for what was going to be done, without taking into account what already existed. If unfavorable conditions existed, they adapted to the new, since the elements that were impacted at that moment had no value or a protection policy.

This trend has been transformed as it is considered necessary to establish whether what is going to be done is appropriate to the work, to the project; It must be considered whether the new, what is intended to do, does not cause an impact on what already exists, both what has been built and already used by man, as well as the natural elements, the ecological.

b) Economic ordering. By establishing as necessary an evaluation of investment costs for the location of projects and works, and by appearing a series of regulations for the protection of both the natural elements existing in an area, as well as the safeguarding of rights acquired through use and exploitation. Of the sites where they are, the need arose to give this way of planning new activities, an economic content.

What for territorial planning is the plane, in the case of the economic conception of planning, it becomes a program in which the location site is just one of the variables, and socioeconomic considerations are added to them, political, legal, anthropological and, in recent years, ecological.

With this new vision, the form of exploitation and use of the territory is conditioned to its economic and ecological viability and its social acceptance in accordance with political trends and compliance with the regulations that relate to it. Thus, it is affirmed that “… ecological ordering is the determination, in a political and socially concerted manner, of technical or technological norms of regional validity, within the framework of a land use model, that regulate and promote productive activities in accordance with the structure of ecosystems and with the interest of current and future majorities ”.

Sort types

A. Environmental management

Environmental management involves the idea of planning the entire environment and its management.

Vicente Sánchez and Beatriz Guiza from the Colegio de México consider in their Glossary on environmental issues, that environmental regulation consists of; a concerted series of analyzes, processes and maneuvers that allow an adequate use of the environment, in order to promote a sustainable economic development that satisfies the real needs of the present and future population.

According to these authors, environmental management must be closely related to the planning and implementation of development, providing important inputs to carry it out.

The term environmental management designates a process that comprises the following stages: environmental assessment or diagnosis; environmental planning, and environmental management or management.

In English the term is environmental management, which only designates environmental management or management.

B. Territorial organization

Brañes considers that land use planning refers to the definition of land uses according to their abilities.

For the Rioduero Dictionary, spatial or territorial planning is a generic concept that refers to any official planning of a territory or space, whether it is an urban space or a regional, regional or national space.

In 1978, the Ministry of the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources of Venezuela defined the planning of the territory as: the uses of the different areas that make up the national physical space, according to their intrinsic characteristics and the development objectives to be achieved within a predetermined time horizon.

According to the same source, in developing countries, where there are still large spaces with a low density of occupation, spatial planning becomes one of the main environmental policies.

Mexican legislation

The legal antecedents from which the Mexican ecological system comes are found in two large legal systems: the General Law of Human Settlements, with the tendency to organize human settlements and in order to give order to the use of the land based on the urban, and the Planning Law, which aims to institutionalize the economic planning process, whose main actor is the public administration, which inductively generates certain conditions for the use of land by individuals.

It should be noted that these laws appeared at two different times. The first in the 1970s, when the role of the State in the intervention of the economy was strengthened, emerged as the first ordinance that established the possibility of giving consistency to land uses. The other, that of Planning, emerged a decade later -decade of the eighties-, to give content to the state intervention through the figure of the National Development Plan, that is, one attends to the territorial trend and the other to the economic in planning.

Based on the above, it is important; see the conditions in which it is found, if it is favorable or not for the environment or how much we will be affecting, after occupying or exploiting the territory, analyze the results that will be reflected once the idea or proposal is launched.

For this reason, Negrete and Bocco (2009), summarize; in six methodological phases for ecological zoning and expressed in figure 1.; As can be seen, they divide it into two processes: management and instrumentation, the first, would basically be the operations carried out to get what you want, within this process there are three phases, the descriptive one, which is what gives an idea the conditions in which the territory is located, the diagnosis that will serve to recognize the space and the prospecting that focuses on an exploration; all these, together lead to the instrumentation that are the means that are needed to carry out what is planned, or to reach a solution.

Methodological phases for ecological planning

Figure 1. Methodological phases for ecological planning

(Source: Negrete Gerardo and Bocco Gerardo)

Territorial planning

Spatial planning is conceptually justified as a mechanism for preventing and attacking the problems generated by territorial imbalances and externalities caused by spontaneous economic growth, where market mechanisms are insufficient (Barragán, 1993).

For this reason, it is necessary to establish whether what will be done is adequate for the work, it is necessary to consider whether what is intended to be done does not cause an impact on what exists, –what is already established, built and used by man–; to mention the management of natural and ecological elements, in the way they are used and exploited.

According to Ganney (1993), land use planning should at least allow the following problems to be solved.

Territorial imbalance concentrating the population in some areas and depopulating others Ecological and landscape impacts due to location incompatible with the environment Imbalance of natural resources Natural risks in the location of activities Disorderly superposition of uses Deficit between infrastructure and collective equipment for residence and employment Conflicts of sectors and activities Lack of coordination between Public bodies of the same rank and between different administrative levels Conflicts between the objectives proposed by local inhabitants and by external actors.

Skepticism

Philosophical Skepticism is a critical attitude that systematically questions the idea that absolute knowledge and certainty are possible, whether in particular or general fields.

Origin of skepticism

Most of what we know about Philosophical Skepticism in ancient times comes from the Sixth Empiricist, who lived around the year 200 and who believed, among other things, that some animals originated from fire, fermented wine, mud, silt, donkeys., cabbages, fruit and rotten animals.

The history of Philosophical Skepticism is very old; starts for example:

The sophist Gorgias (483 - 378 BC) asserted that nothing exists or that if something exists it cannot be known, or that if something exists and can be known, it cannot be communicated. Pyron (approx. 360 - 270 BC) is considered the first philosophical skeptic of Western philosophy, but little is known about him or his followers, or even the next greats in the history of skepticism: Arcesilao (approx. 316 - 241 BC.) and Carneades (214 - 129 BC.), each of whom led the Academy founded by Plato. The first group of philosophical skeptics is known as the Pyrronists, the next as the Academics. Neither the Pyrronists nor the Academics seem to have supported the nihilism that Gorgias advocated.

Throughout history, sensory skeptics have argued that things are only perceived as they appear and that it is not possible to know what causes those appearances.

Therefore, if there is sensory knowledge, it is always personal, immediate and mutable. Any deduction from appearances is subject to error and we have no method of knowing whether our deductions or judgments are correct. However, these arguments have not prevented many skeptics from tending a defense of probabilism in relation to empirical knowledge; nor have they stopped dogmatists in their search for absolute truth elsewhere, namely, in Reason or in Logic.

Perhaps the strongest criticism of the possibility of absolute truth is the skeptical argument about the criterion of truth. Any criterion used to judge the certainty of a statement can be challenged because another criterion is necessary to judge the present criterion, and so on to infinity.

This argument did not deter philosophers such as Plato and Descartes from claiming that they had found an absolute and impeccable criterion of truth. While most skeptics would reject the idea that this criterion is what Plato and Descartes intend, that same majority would probably accept the arguments of Saint Augustine and others that affirm the existence of absolutely true statements, but that these are a matter of Logic and they have nothing to do in establishing the certainty of any statement that goes beyond our immediate perception.

Types of skepticism

Philosophical Skepticism is distinguished from Ordinary Skepticism, where doubts are raised against certain beliefs or types of beliefs since the evidence to support them is weak or scarce.

Ordinary skeptics are not gullible or naive, they don't just take things as true, they must first see the evidence to believe. They doubt religious miracles, extraterrestrial abductions, psychoanalysis, etc.; but they do not doubt that certainty or knowledge is possible. They do not doubt these things because of systematic arguments that undermine any claim of knowledge.

Considerations

The Environmental Variables for Urban Planning, it is essential to know their meaning, what are involved, main characteristics and urban planning.

Skepticism current - definition of skepticism, origins, characteristics, types. The importance of the skepticist current in the environmental variables important for Urban Planning.

Proposed model

The following sequence is suggested to develop a model that analyzes the environmental variables in a medium of skepticism by the main actors of the scene. With the following sequence.

Identify the natural environment and the human being Locate the environmental variables subject to analysis for their relationship Selection of environmental variables Places of localized affectation Make the matrix between components socio-environmental processes Locate conditions of skepticism in the actors-population

Sequence in detail

1. Socio-environmental sphere: natural environment and human being

In our society, it is worth mentioning that variables are fundamental, in addition to being essential, in any study, they represent characteristics that are the basis, or the origin of others, which together generates an interrelation.

Referring to the socio-environmental sphere, it is where the social and environmental spheres are systematically related, it is important to make known the main characteristics in each of these spheres, the way in which they are related in what is also called the environment or the environment. natural transformed by human beings.

In figure 2, it is identified that; There is a natural environment composed of renewable and non-renewable elements, the human being is immersed in this point; since, it has the possibility of altering it considerably through demographic behaviors or those it has with respect to the natural environment.

Socio-Environmental Field

Figure 2. Socio-Environmental Scope

(Source: Guttman SE, Zorro SC, De Forero AC, Ramírez JC, 2004: p. 17)

2. Variables subject to analysis

In figure 3 it is observed, in the first order are the environmental variables that we find in the natural environment (air, water, soils, flora, fauna, subsoil), in the intermediate part we see the social variables that influence the environmental ones, giving as The result was the transformation of the former to the urban and rural aspect.

Relations between environmental and social variables

Figure 3. Relationships between environmental and social variables

(Source: Guttman SE, Zorro SC, De Forero AC, Ramírez JC; 2004: p.17, 18)

Focusing on environmental variables, Pérez Maldonado (1999); recommends based on the conditions, limitations and restrictions, which must be established for environmental protection of urban activities that imply occupation of the territory or changes of use and result in modifications of the forms and effects of the bioecological processes of nature.

3. Environmental variables

The environmental variables considered, it is advisable to eliminate those that are not related in the analysis of the relationship matrix.

Every action has a reaction, and this is how the transformations that the natural environment is going to undergo as a consequence of the action of the human being affect to a greater or lesser degree the different demographic conditions, relationships, culture and living conditions.

It is therefore a permanent interaction between the sets of social and environmental variables, in which each socioeconomic variable influences one or more environmental variables, these in turn are influenced by one or more of these.

In ancient Mexico, indigenous populations were directly linked to their natural environment, conducting natural resource management, which some authors consider adequate, as it causes little deterioration, and with a deep knowledge of the environment.

4. Impairments for execution

From a personal point of view, awareness must be raised before acting, in the effects that we will do to the environment, that is why there must be a series of regulations that allow us to anticipate before taking the first step.

Next, a matrix will be shown in Table 1 that relates to the environmental variables –on the vertical axis– and the variables that allow the different interrelationships with the social components –horizontal axis–.

5. Make a matrix of components and socio-environmental processes

It is convenient to carry out the matrix of components to identify the relationships with the identified socio-environmental processes. This is observed in table 1.

Table 1. Interrelationship matrix between components that intervene in social and environmental processes

(Source: Guttman SE, Zorro SC, De Forero AC, Ramírez JC; 2004: p.17, 18)

Matrix of interrelations between components that intervene in social and environmental processes

Based on the above, we realize how there is an influence in each of the aspects that will depend primarily on the conditions to which it is subjected, the influence that is made on each one, either negatively or positively, losses, limitations; all this through a knowledge that allows to understand, study, analyze, verify and interpret each result, to be subjected to study or modifications.

This relationship of environmental variables with society has occurred since the beginning of humanity, from the moment in which the living being established itself by taking over a place to live, to the way in which it managed to survive, the tools he created to hunt, and how he acquired each of these materials extracted from his environment.

6. Locate conditions of skepticism in the population

It is common for the population that is affected or benefited by an environmental regulation, to inform them of the benefits so that skepticism is not manifested, which becomes normal when a condition occurs that will have global benefit.

Proposed empirical model

The following sequence is suggested when faced with the urgency of carrying out a methodology, empirically with four steps.

Delimit and identify the area to be ordered Describe the natural, social and economic components Identify the interests of the sectors involved Define, analyze and weigh the variables that the sectors consider define their aptitude (environmental attributes) this through public participation workshops.

All information is obtained from various documentary sources as well as public participation workshops for the selected group.

Final comments

Urban green areas should be grouped into open or public spaces, recreational and leisure places –such as parks–, and places with restricted or private access, which are often accompanied by homes where green areas are indicative of social status. The main function of these areas is to achieve suitable settings for recreational and social activities that are of great importance for the physical environment, biodiversity and air quality. Currently, urban green areas play an important role in the environmental quality of cities and their proper management offers numerous possibilities for the correction and prevention of resulting problems (Echechuri; Giudice and Prudkin, 1990).

Environmental indicators are mechanisms that allow articulating the objectives of sustainability; Its importance lies in contemplating whether it is sectoral or comprehensive, they are formulated in a unique and unrepeatable context at a social, administrative and territorial level. Depending on the form, selected information and relationships established between variables to be evaluated, clues will be obtained that indicate the ideal interpretation of sustainability promoted by local managers.

As expressed, the systemic characterization of the park made it possible to identify the central variables, interactions, cause-effect relationships, conditions of vulnerability, management; all of them relevant aspects in the construction of the proposed indicators. Figure 4. shows the ten formulated indicators grouped into six categories or criteria.

Figure 4. Proposed indicators

(Source: Example of information collected)

Proposed indicators

Conclusions

From this analysis, it is possible to conclude and make a series of recommendations in the following sense:

It is necessary to integrate the legal framework that provides the bases for the general ecological ordering of the territory that includes the part of water management if it is coastal and marine.

Ecological criteria are required to be provided by policy and by region, as sectorization complicates the methodological framework for application.

It is recommended that ecological zoning be carried out with the necessary flexibility to evaluate the first zoning projects, especially at the local level of application.

For the national ecological ordering, a reference framework is recommended not only for territorial but also economic planning, to know the impacts and predict the negative effects of the application of policies that are not inserted within the ecological ordering in any of its expressions, as policies, as norms or as criteria.

Pilot analyzes are recommended at the local level to understand the deficiencies of the general framework at the time of application.

It is recommended to strengthen the inter-ministerial coordination mechanisms through the insertion of ecological ordering criteria in the development planning framework.

It is recommended to strengthen the concertation mechanisms to bring them to the level of legally effective agreements with specific obligations and sanctions for non-compliance by the parties with the clauses of the agreement; Only in this way will it be possible to have a basis to be able to insert ecological planning as a form of participation by individuals.

Proposal

The objective is to obtain a land occupation pattern that maximizes consensus between sectors, minimizes environmental conflicts and favors sustainable development. Among the main activities and products are.

Delimit Environmental Management Units (UGAS) Assign ecological guidelines to UGAs, understood as the goal or desired state in a UGA Define ecological strategies that include specific objectives, actions, programs, projects and those responsible of its realization aimed at achieving ecological guidelines. Integrate the Model that is the representation in a geographic information system, of the environmental management units and their respective ecological guidelines and strategies.

Bibliographic reference

Bibliography

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