El sentido del lugar urbano en la investigación en educación ambiental en Bogotá D.C., Colombia

Abstract

The urban context is configured by a mosaic of places, the result of social construction and multiple territorialities. The relationships that people establish with places are determined by attributes of dependence, attachment and identity, which together are expressed through the sense of place. Environmental education, as a social field, approaches environmental understanding from conative, affective and cognitive aspects. The conceptual bridge between sense of place and environmental education offers, from an integral and complex approach, a way to understand and act on the socio-environmental problems of the city. Sense of place is represented by dependence, attachment and identity to place. In this qualitative approach study, we sought to interpret the sense of place and its relationship with environmental education, in research processes developed in non-school contexts and in the urban environment of Bogotá D.C., through the technique of content analysis of post-graduate theses. The socio-environmental context represents a city with a territorial structure that integrates ecological elements, around which environmental education research is developed with multi-scale spatial references. The participating population finds itself in territorial contexts in which tensions, interests and conflicts arise, in the midst of community and institutional participatory initiatives for the management of environmental processes and projects. Dependence on the place is expressed through the activities, practices or actions, contacts and interactions, stays and desires for permanence of the social actors. Attachment to place is expressed through the perceptions generated by people's needs, emotions, stimuli and motivations, as well as by the links derived from feelings and values. Identity for place is expressed through participation, cultural expressions and socio-spatial representations constructed individually and collectively. Finally, from environmental education emerge expressions that are directly related to dependence, attachment and identity to place, in a close synergetic relationship for the understanding of the socio-environmental context, from an integral and complex vision.