Project: Masterplan of Zumaia
Location: Zumaia, Basque Country, Spain
Year | Duration: 2020 - now
Partners: LurStudio, Createlli, Erdu, Ekos.
Client: Municipality of Zumaia
CONTEXT AND OBJECTIVE
Zumaia is a coastal town of the Basque Country. Its urban legislation is now getting obsolete, and therefore the city council began at the beginning of 2020 with the preparation of the new municipal Masterplan’s (PGOU) preparation. The elaboration of the PGOU, consists of a long and complex process, with several phases until the final approval.
The citizen participation is mandatory by law, and especially meaningful in the first phases of the process. The Phase 0, with its Citizen Participation Program, is now over, and the Phase 1, is about to start.
In this phase 0 the goal was to promote an informed participation. The process was open to all citizens of Zumaia in order to collect and contrast the needs of the municipality and see which were the topics in which there was a social consensus and which ones lacked of it. This information would then be incorporated to the following phases of the future PGOU.
Participation started on March 10. The process had to face the challenge of situation derived from Covid-19, so some of the participatory activities were affected and the schedule was extended.
INFORMATION
Thus, several information material were developed all the content was translated to a non-technical language and structured in ten themes in order to facilitate understanding. Due to the state of alarm of Covid-19, face-to-face information sessions had to be canceled.
Despite of the situation, citizens were well informed by different channels: the website of the process, press releases, the information video that was released on the municipal YouTube channel, and invitation mailing and phone calls that were done to specific associations and targeted actors.
PARTICIPATION
The participation was enabled by different channels: It was possible to participate via the PGOU’s own web (www.hapo-zumaia.eus), by filling in the paper questionnaires and through telematic interviews.
EVALUATION AND RESULTS
233 people participated in the process, despite the difficult circumstances and the vast majority did it digitally. Participation in the different topics was quite equal. While all ten must be priority for the new PGOU, those that had the greatest participation were the Mobility, the Natural Environment and Housing, followed by Tourism, Public Space and Facilities. There was a consensus on almost all topics and issues that were raised, except in those of Facilities and Tourism, with a diversity of opinions on the different issues raised.
These contributions are expected to contribute to the next phase of the new PGOU, the development of the Advanced Draft Document.
