A Social Cohesion and Equity Methodology for Emerging Metropolitan Areas and Bioregions

Abstract

It is a certitude at the beginning of the third decade of the twenty-first century, in the age of the Anthropocene, that we are in a situation of universal health emergency caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, and immersed in the context of a dramatic scene within many of the metropolises that previously felt strong and safe. This immense health crisis must contribute to face, this time on time and with sufficient clarity, the greatest social, ecological, economic, and health-related challenge of the twenty-first century: Climate and Global Change (Salazar-Galán, Crisis sistémica y coronavirus (I). https://ctxt.es/es/20200302/Politica/31295/coronavirus-epidemia-crisis-capitalismo-recesion-joan-benach.htm, 2020, March 10). Nevertheless, while the uncertainty about the outbreak of the pandemic is cleared up, research on metropolitan areas can shed light on how health can be a right in Environmental Justice, rather than a matter of human control. In what follows, we will present a reflective methodology that prioritizes social cohesion and equity, proposing to expand the sense of the metropolitan to an idea of a bioregion.