What do a physiotherapist, a housewife, a nurse, a sociologist, a teacher and an architect do together?
And if, in addition, they have to recognise the environment from the eyes of Candela, a neighbour who moves with a walker; Manu, who has to go to school; Laura, who has to run errands or Joan, who has to buy the ingredients to prepare an escudella?
Last week we held the second workshop with the +Actiu Community of Practice, this time led by the Healthy Cities team of Marta Rofín, Celia García, Amber de la Haye and Sofia Aivalioti, and with the support of the ICO-Idibell team of Paula Jakszyn and Mercedes Gil, as well as the Blanquerna Faculty of Health Sciences representative Júlia Ollé.
Almost 30 people, including professionals from different fields (urban planning and health), residents, and technicians from the City Council, participated in this workshop, which had the dual objective of 1) analysing the urban environment to identify the conditioning factors for an active lifestyle and 2) identifying priority actions to respond to the needs previously detected.
To this end, several sessions were held over the course of the day, distributed between la Oficina del Plan Integral and the area around Avenida Cataluña. Firstly, an exploratory route was carried out in teams in the area around the avenue. Through different everyday situations proposed, the teams analysed urban aspects that can condition our health: from the configuration of the neighbourhood, mobility, the offer of services and facilities, or the green areas and public space. Putting ourselves in other people’s shoes helps us to better understand how the environment influences our lifestyle and the promotion of physical activity.
Although the project focuses on people with chronic pathologies, given that sedentary lifestyles are particularly prevalent among this group, it has been shown that physical (in)activity is related to all the characteristics of the urban environment, so the workshop addressed all of them.
With this in mind, the teams had to carry out a diagnosis of the neighbourhood, assessing all the aspects that characterise it and sharing with the rest of the teams their vision of the situation, analysed from very heterogeneous points of view. Combining these points of view, we obtained the overall vision of the neighbourhood, which was captured in a spider diagram in which scores were assigned to each of the aspects. We were able to observe that, although each group had paid attention to more specific aspects and details of the environment, the conclusions reflected a shared diagnosis: although the neighbourhood has a lot of commercial activity and a wide range of services and facilities, they do not seem to be sufficient to cover the needs of a hyper-densified neighbourhood, in which there is also a shortage of open spaces such as parks and social meeting places. The issue of mobility and the use of private vehicles also generated debate, as there is a large surface area dedicated to private parking and a lack of integration of cycling infrastructure and pedestrian priority routes in the area as a whole.
This diagnosis was completed with the Healthy Cities Generator, our tool that spotlights aspects of the urban environment needing improvement based on the most unfavourable health data, in this case for La Florida and Les Planes. Together with part of the participatory diagnosis, it was shown that in this context it is essential to extend the green coverage and improve the public space. Combining an objective analysis with a more qualitative one allows for a more reliable and accurate picture of the context.
Finally, each group was asked to develop a proposal based on the previous conclusions of the analysis. The variety of ideas that emerged highlighted the need to incorporate citizens and professional experts together in the design and decision-making processes for creating common spaces. The proposals ranged from creating green corridors throughout the neighbourhood with routes for active mobility and the reduction of traffic and parking space, to creating intergenerational meeting areas and introducing water as an ornamental element and as a resource for irrigation and leisure, always focusing on the different groups that live in the neighbourhood and on how this environment could be a promoter of an active and healthy lifestyle.
Curious to learn more about +Actiu? Check out the project website!
