Landscape as a Phenomenon and Object of Public Interest: By What Right?

Abstract

This article aims at discussing the city’s landscape as a phenomenon and object of public interest, emphasizing it as a law theme, in view to establish it as a specific public policy for urban development. At first, it explores issues involving the contemporary “human-nature-city” relationship, as an indicator of an ethical-political crisis of the State, which reflects a representation crisis involving fundamental constitutional rights closely connected to a wide-range environmental crisis. It argues that the ever-increasing process of socio-political fragmentation of the city has consequences on the landscape and explores it as a public interest issue, in view of an “ecologically balanced environment”. Finally, it reviews some emerging national and international documents that propose landscape public policies, evaluating the scope of their proposals.In conclusion, and in response to the provocation laid by its title, the article points out that: the cities’ landscape, in modernity context, has been neglected by the State; the principle of public interest supremacy, as a republic’s logic, has been nowadays inverted due to the sovereignty of private (over public) interests in urban development processes; and lastly, landscape is instrumental in public policy making considering the sociopolitical dimension of the city - where landscape is a phenomenon and object of public interest - in the context of policies for urban development in Brazil.