2022 Award "Best Practice in Citizen Participation"
16th Edition
The Participatory Diagnosis of the Historic Area of Viseu is an initiative promoted by the Parish of Viseu/Portugal and coordinated by researcher/consultant Ana Condeço Simões, which aims to obtain information and generate collective knowledge about problems, needs, resources and development opportunities. of this area of the city, through spaces of debate in which the different social actors involved can take part and have an active voice.
The historic center of Viseu is a key area of the city, in which lies its identity, its unique and distinctive character, a significant part of its architectural, monumental, cultural and artistic heritage. It is also here that the potential for tourist attraction and the creation of new activities linked to creativity and innovation are located, as a result of recent regenerative efforts in the municipality of Viseu.
However, despite the many efforts in the attempt to rehabilitate and revitalize the historic area, it represents one of the areas of greatest social exclusion, although not properly diagnosed. In a heritage area, it is important that the people who live and work there recognize themselves as part of a community, a territory of belonging. The property rehabilitation process has already reached an overall value of over 28.6 million euros and, given all this investment, it is now important to listen above all to the people who live or work there and understand their reasons and what measures they propose to increase their quality of life. From the concern with the aesthetics and preservation of matter, to the identification and elimination of social injustice, everything is a continuum that must be ensured. To this end, it is necessary to identify all the actors to hear the different discourses on the problem. With groups of citizens, “relationship maps between actors” were prepared, with the purpose of understanding “Who is who and how are the different entities, people and collectives related to the problem?”, “Who is less visible?”. From there, we sought to achieve the greatest possible representation of social discourses through different calls for typologies of actors: institutional sector, self-organized sector and non-organized citizenship. Residents, tenants and new investors, merchants, bar owners, young people and students, cultural agents, migrants, tourists, municipal technicians and local organizations, social leaders and policy makers, all points of view are wanted to be collected in the Participatory Diagnosis of the Zone History of Viseu. The different social actors become the protagonists when it comes to defining problems and solutions that they perceive in their day-to-day with regard to the historic area.
In this work with the population, it is essential to set up working groups with citizens interested in the development of this very special area of the city of Viseu. Based on the principles of participatory democracy and greater equity between existing social relations, to set this initiative in motion, we resort to different qualitative and participatory methodologies and techniques.
The experience aims to generate not only a diagnostic report with proposals for action, but also work groups that take ownership of the process, to give continuity to it, because they feel it is their own.
More information:
http://freguesiadeviseu.pt/portal/
This proposal has been accepted because:
Related images
Report inappropriate content
Is this content inappropriate?
12 comments
Loading comments ...
Loading comments ...