Students' awareness of the urban environment in a small Greek city

Abstract

Guided and open ended questionnaires are distributed to secondary school students in the small Greek city of Serres in order to study their preconceptions about the urban environment. According to students' responses the word city is mostly connected with negative natural, social and structural features. Evidence is provided that young people are developing a reasonable conscious of environmental issues, especially regarding acute everyday aspects of city life, e.g. solid waste management. Places of entertainment and leisure as well as places representing the history of the city are also highly appreciated. Noticeably, students have only a limited knowledge of the living species of their city, identifying as such mostly pets and other relatively large animals but almost no plants. Finally, a comparison is conducted with an analogous study from the small Spanish city of Orense leading to similar conclusions, a fact which lends support to the notion of a common European environmental education policy.