6. Gigantic Cities and the New Challenge of an Old Science: Geoethics, Geoeducation, and Geoknowledge in Porto Alegre, Brazil

In the present time, we are facing new challenges that require us to review the role of Geology to the material, cognitive and ethic progress of humankind. The vertiginous population growth, urban sprawl, increasing demand for solid, liquid, and gaseous geosphere, the collapse of the ecosystems that support life and the climate change replace Geology as one of the most important contemporary sciences. We need to review procedures, analytical scales and contribute to civilization process. Essentially, we need Geology help develop a deep Geoethic on the use of land resources, care with the geosphere, and mankind sustainability. The Geoethic emerges as a new understanding that cleaves across all geological activities, whether of scientific practice, or the practice of exploitation of natural resources, and or also the knowledge of how geodynamics affects cities and human activities and vice versa. At the root of contemporary environmental and urban problems, whether planetary or local is how the city is perceived by its inhabitants, managers, and intelligentsia. The ascent of urban realm in the next 30 years is expected to almost duplicate the nowadays 3.6 billion inhabitants. The central challenge for the geology and Geoethics is to consider the many problems due to the complex relations between the large urban needs and geolandscape transformations. The main goal of this chapter is to describe the ascent of cities’ scales—from city and megacity to megalopolis and ecumenopolis—in order to describe connections between the physical world-city and the superficial components of the Earth systems. The techno-urbansphere is defined as the urban physical totality, which includes the man-made system and the lithosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere, and biosphere’s portions transformed by it. Due to geologic scale of the techno-urbansphere, it is not possible to observe it by a citizen without technical and Earth science concepts and instruments. To offer to citizens and decisions makers accurate instruments to understand the nowadays urban geocomplexities, thematic surveys of the urban physical totality are very important. This possibility is illustrated by the Environmental Atlas of Porto Alegre case, which triggered new looks in urban environmental management, geoethics and geoeducation in Porto Alegre city, Southern Brazil.