The third session of the +Actiu Community of Practice (CoP) brought together a total of 17 people from a wide variety of backgrounds with the aim of jointly creating and designing solutions to promote an active and healthy lifestyle in the project’s study site, Avinguda Catalunya.
Thanks to the work done in the two previous workshops, the participants were able to put ideas into practice in 4 pre-selected spaces around the avenue. These spaces of varying scales were identified in the previous workshop for their potential to support activities and improve the physical conditions of the space itself.
By working in teams to analyse the space of opportunity in depth and assess the conditioning factors of the place and the possible users (barriers, facilitators), as well as the variety of activities and uses that could be developed in each space, it was finally possible to shape several very powerful proposals with holistic interventions. They could be summarised as follows:
- Improving the accessibility of the space and providing a greater perception of safety (ramps, adapted furniture, lighting), as well as incorporating shade elements (pergolas, trees) for the stay and other essential services to encourage the use of the space, such as toilets. Vegetation and the introduction of water, such as fountains and sprinklers, is also key.
- Take advantage of existing furniture and elements for sports practice (e.g. push-up benches) and introduce new ones such as structures for callisthenics and natural elements such as logs and different types of paving.
- Create multi-purpose spaces for intergenerational use by integrating children’s play areas, petanque, exercise and large spaces that allow the development of different activities simultaneously and at different times of the day.
- Marking out an exercise itinerary throughout the area that connects different points along the route by means of walking and running lanes (painted on the pavement) and indicating the exercises and distances along the route by means of signposting.
The proposals, which serve as a conclusion to this work with the CoP over the 3 sessions, reinforce the idea that in order to achieve an active and healthy lifestyle, it is essential to live in quality urban environments. And this, in turn, is essential for so-called Active Prescription, sport and physical activity as a preventive therapy, something that is impossible to carry out if the environment in which we live does not facilitate it.
The +Actiu project will now focus on shaping and defining the proposals co-created in these workshops for implementation as a pilot project. Furthermore, the project will generate guides that facilitate the use of public space for physical activity through involving neighbourhood stakeholders and key figures for the Active Prescription, as well as dynamising the activities in the different spaces and the maintenance and monitoring of those.
