Karmele
Herranz-Pascual, Mª Carmen Paniagua, Beñat Abajo, Efren Feliu
Neighbourhood
participation is one of the most relevant challenges in urban planning. The
City Council of Vitoria-Gasteiz wants to involve as many citizens in the
development of the new General Urban Plan with different levels and areas of
participation: political, technical, professional and citizen participation.
The aim of this participatory process is to create a constructive and positive
discussion with the public, so they can make plural visions from all areas and
contribute to building a debate on the future of the town and its rural areas.
The project is called: How do you imagine Vitoria- Gasteiz in 2025?
The citizens have been participating through various channels adapted to
everyone: web, social networks, public workshops… One of the tools was
Harava-Vitoria, based on Harava platform developed by the Finnish Environment
Institute (SYKE) and the Finnish Ministry of Environment. This participation
tool has been developed by a collaboration agreement between the city of
Vitoria-Gasteiz (Planning Department) and Tecnalia Research and Innovation.
Through the tool Tecnalia provides a support service, advice and monitoring to
Vitoria-Gasteiz in this citizen participation process, helping to implement the
survey tool designed in Harava and in their exploitation.
The
platform seeks to explore new ways to improve urban planning integrating new
technologies, spatial analysis and social participation about the 11 main axes
of the revision of the General Urban Plan of the city. Participation is done
through an online questionnaire associated with digital and geo-referenced
cartography of the municipality. The survey was open to all citizens, via its
website for three months.
In this process 300
citizens participated, 94% of participants lived in Vitoria-Gasteiz mainly in
urban areas. In this process, the citizens gave
information about 2,497 spatial elements. The results show that citizens go to
the City Centre once a week, mainly for leisure, work or shopping while the settlements and
rural areas are visited eventually for sport and leisure activities. The whole
city and especially the old town need more trade and economic activities (small
businesses) to become a more liveable place. New neighbourhoods need better
bike and pedestrian connections and public transport too. Citizens perceive
negatively city areas in disrepair or halfbuilt, which are regarded as
abandoned and unsafe, while they considered sites with building heritage and
public places to enjoy their leisure time in, as positive.
As conclusion can
be said, that Harava platform has demonstrated to be a good participatory tool
to gather interesting information to guide the review of the Master Plan for Urban development (or Urban zoning),
integrating spatial and alphanumeric variables, permitting to identity needs
and improved areas in the city, as well as citizen uses, perceptions and values
about city of Vitoria-Gasteiz. However, some
improvements would be needed to increase the efficiency of this tool. To
facilitate the work of analyzing the information gathered may be necessary the
incorporation of a previous process of spatial information to be able to
statistically analyze geo-referenced information. From of point of view
of the citizen, it would be necessary to give some kind of feedback information
of their participation or comparing it with other related participants.
The writers are
involved with the “How do you imagine Vitoria-Gasteiz in 2025” project in
Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain. Herranz-Pascual, Abajo and Feliu work for Tecnalia
Research & Innovation, whereas Paniagua is integrant of the Office for the Review of the Master Plan of
Vitoria-Gasteiz.
Suomenkielinen
tiivistelmä
Haravan maailmanvalloitus Espanjassa on vauhdissa:
Vitoria-Gasteizin kaupungin Harava-kysely on päättynyt ja tuloksia on
analysoitu. Kysely tehtiin yleiskaavan kehittämisen tueksi. Siihen vastasi 300
kaupungin asukasta, jotka kertoivat käyvänsä kaupungin keskustassa pääasiassa
työn vuoksi, vapaa-aikana tai ostoksilla, kun taas kaupungin laitamilla
urheilemassa tai muuten nauttimassa vapaa-ajasta. Kaupunkilaiset toivoivat
kaupunkiin parempia kevyenliikenteen yhteyksiä, julkista liikennettä sekä lisää
eloa esimerkiksi uusien kauppojen myötä. Harava-palvelu toimi hankkeessa
osallistumisen välineenä hyvin, mutta palvelun kehittämiseksi entistä paremmaksi
olisi hyvä, että kyselyn tekijä voisi analysoida kyselynsä vastauksia palvelun
avulla, ja että vastaaja saisi kyselyyn vastattuaan palautetta
osallistumisestaan tai voisi esimerkiksi vertailla muiden antamia vastauksia
omiinsa. Kirjoittajat työskentelevät kaupungin hankkeen parissa.
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