experience of a communitarian salvation often generates creative ideas for the improvement of a
buildingor aneighbourhood.
117
150. Given the interrelationship between living space and human behaviour, those who design
buildings, neighbourhoods, public spaces and cities, ought to draw on the various disciplines which
help us to understand people’s thought processes, symbolic language and ways of acting. It is not
enough to seek the beauty of design. More precious still is the service we offer to another kind of
beauty: people’s quality of life, their adaptation to the environment, encounter and mutual assistance.
Here too, we see how important it is that urban planning always take into consideration the views of
thosewhowill live in these areas.
151. There is also a need to protect those common areas, visual landmarks and urban landscapes
which increase our sense of belonging, of rootedness, of “feeling at home”within a citywhich includes
us and brings us together. It is important that the different parts of a city be well integrated and that
those who live there have a sense of the whole, rather than being confined to one neighbourhood and
failing to see the larger city as spacewhich they sharewithothers. Interventionswhich affect theurban
or rural landscape should take into account how various elements combine to form a whole which is
perceived by its inhabitants as a coherent and meaningful framework for their lives. Others will then
no longer be seen as strangers, but as part of a “we” which all of us are working to create. For this
same reason, in both urban and rural settings, it is helpful to set aside some places which can be
preserved andprotected from constant changes brought byhuman intervention.
152. Lack of housing is a grave problem inmany parts of the world, both in rural areas and in large
cities, since state budgets usually cover only a small portion of the demand. Not only the poor, but
manyothermembers of society aswell, find it difficult toown ahome. Having ahome hasmuch to do
with a sense of personal dignity and the growth of families. This is amajor issue for human ecology.
In some places, where makeshift shanty towns have sprung up, this will mean developing those
neighbourhoods rather than razing or displacing them. When the poor live in unsanitary slums or in
117
Some authors have emphasized the values frequently found, for example, in the
villas
,
chabolas
or
favelas
of Latin
America: cf. JUANCARLOSSCANNONE, S.J., “La irrupción del pobre y la lógica de la gratuidad”, in JUANCARLOS
SCANNONE andMARCELO PERINE (eds.),
Irrupción del pobre y quehacer filosófico. Hacia una nueva racionalidad,
BuenosAires, 1993, 225-230.
