Rethinking the Urban Common Good Towards an Integral Ecology

Latin America is experiencing an abrupt occupation of urban environments by growing populations. This fact unleashes innumerable effects in the environmental and socio-economic spheres, and although the commitments of the urban agenda to regulate and make urbanisation more efficient in the lives of citizens were made clear, their fulfilment continues to be a great challenge today. The aim of this article is to analyse the urban development model in the Latin American context in order to rethink more lasting and meaningful processes for the preservation and safeguarding of the common good that ensures dignity and quality of life. The study proposes three stages of reflection: 1) analysis of the situation of unsustainability in Latin American cities, 2) review of the sustainable city model of the European framework, the integral ecology principles of Laudato Si and the Economy of Francesco (EoF) and 3) promotion of a policy to migrate from a development model based on physical and spontaneous transformation to a more transcendent one rethinking the common good. It is hoped that urban planning procedures and developments, as well as those of everyday life, will henceforth take these premises into account in their guidelines and align themselves with values that make it possible to measure not only gains in terms of the local economy but also in the social, cultural, political and spiritual dimension, going beyond the ephemeral. In short, renewable cycles for people and their well-being, knowledge, social trust and happiness are dimensions that will contribute to the construction of a more sustainable, just and beautiful world that will fully achieve its most transcendental value.