Public Policies Ecologization: The Master Plan Discourse and the Practical in Araruama, Brazil

Abstract

This article proposes to open a debate about the greening of public policies through the analysis of local strategies. Greening will thus be treated in this article as an institutional support and, in particular, of public institutions which deliberate on legislative texts, in order to make them compatible with global ecological guidelines, without, however, having revised the laws necessary to apply the law at the local level. The objective will be to understand this logic of greening of legal texts at the local level through a reading of some general guidelines on urban development and green areas, from the Master Plan, an important local Brazilian law on land planning. The results show that, in some cases, the reality verified in the field reveals a shift in political action towards practices contrary to the published law. Thus, the Master Plan turns out to be an urban policy to be evaluated taking into account its institutional weakness, in particular the application of the orientations proposed by local authorities.