Educação ambiental e transformação de espaços urbanos: novas formas de habitar, múltiplas formas de aprender

Abstract

All over the world today, there are more people living in cities than in the countryside. The accelerated urbanization associated with the socioenvironmental impacts of the capitalist mode of production is presented as one of the main problems of modernity. However, we can highlight in this destabilizing scenario initiatives aimed at reconciling urban environment and nature and the articulation between people in search of better cities to live and live together. Discussing the current environmental crisis requires taking into account actions articulated in the spheres of politics, economics, knowledge production and education, seeking the linkage between the real nature of environmental issues, human activities and educational processes. Critical environmental education can be seen as a possible translator of the language of collectives who bring alternative projects for the construction of a less predatory urban society. The focus of this investigation refers to the educational dimension of social practices of public intervention, admittedly guided by another environmental praxis. This praxis is revealed in the daily work of all those who are included as promoters of this new inhabit in realities of communitarian spaces that are proposed to new ways of working in and with the urban space. The concern that motivated this research is: were these interventions of transformation of urban spaces an environmental education happening in practice? And how do these people educate themselves and others in this group in this reality? In view of these questions, it was intended to understand this environmental educator process of transformation-re-signification-reoccupation of the spaces, from a contextual cut in the communitarian urban gardens that are spread and promote the environmentalization of the São Paulo/SP metropolis. Corresponding to our theoretical-methodological horizon, for this qualitative research, we take the position of participant observation and insert ourselves as participants in the context to be investigated. This point of departure and arrival allowed us a better understanding of the phenomenon (s) that involves (s) the action of humans between themselves and humans in / towards the environment. We conclude that this study focused on the experiences of transformation of urban spaces, with a cut to the context of some initiatives in urban community agriculture in the city of São Paulo/SP, confirms the prerogative of which we learn everywhere and can enrich the field of research in environmental non-school education, which involves efforts not only to look at the institutional and political relationships of educating themselves, but also m qualify its practice from the space in which it takes place. This is an effort that we have achieved by highlighting educational processes in the social practices of transforming public spaces in cities.