Eduardo Domingues

This research project expects to strengthen rural and urban development through democratic territorial planning and environmental concern. Our premise is that the integration of rural areas development into democratic urban planning can improve territorial organization and this territorial plan can be optimized through the implementation of environmental protection actions.
We learned that urban land was the opposite of rural land, this one is for production and the first for the distribution of wealth, for scientific production, for the arts. Therefore, we forget (or choose not to see) that the rural environment and the rural way of life are culturally rich in their traditions, and their ethics, in sustainability. Only the large agricultural industries, the timber and mining companies, as well as the large urban construction industries are interested in the division between urban and rural planning. In this way, the needs of small organic farms and urban workers living in poor areas are managed not to be considered.

The integration of urban and rural developments into a territorial plan is not only possible but necessary to help the implementation of the SDGs if we want to overcome the environmental disaster that we, as humankind, brought to planet Earth. The points that bind together rural and urban plannings are the environmental damage and the social iniquity that we cause to sustain modern societies and the urban way of life. Therefore, setting the agenda for nature’s protection and bringing people to discuss rural and urban local development are instruments to achieve a territorial sustainable development plan.

Through the study of urban planning movements, from sanitation measures to zoning rules, smart cities, and bike-friendly cities we can discuss Lefebvre’s “right to the city” and Castells’ “urban question”; through the study of nature’s legal personality and environmental protection instruments, it’s possible to ask if we are doing enough to protect the environment and, therefore, to protect humans as well. Applying the methods of bibliographic review, survey research of territorial plans, and study case of the Loire Valley Parliament, the project aims to analyze, both in France and in Brazil, the integration of the development of rural areas into democratic urban planning, seeking to reveal the strengths and weaknesses of these plans, as well as to point out their needs and possibilities of transformation and integration with rural development.

A democratic participation process is a form of policy-making and decision-making, understanding this process, and its effects on the Science of Law and the community is important to pursue general principles that may be of help for spreading practices on integration of rural and urban development into territorial planning through environmental protection. More than preparing cities, Covid-19 showed us that we need to prepare societies to face the biggest threat of all, the modern way of life.