2024 Award "Best Practice in Citizen Participation"

The participatory process for the design of the square of the Roís de Corella Integral Health Centre consisted of a community process of collective design of an urban space (Roís de Corella square located in the integral health centre) of the municipality of Gandia and its Health Impact Assessment, developed during the year 2021-2022.

The process has had a participatory methodology of collective work through: a coordinating group, a monitoring committee, and technical spaces (municipal and health staff) and neighbourhood spaces (with people from the neighbourhood and the associative fabric). It has been structured in five phases: Health Impact Assessment, diagnosis of the needs of the neighbourhood regarding the square and its surroundings, training session on urban planning and health, and validation and definition of the design. In each of these phases, work has been carried out in parallel or jointly with the technical and neighbourhood areas.

The result of the Health Impact Assessment indicates that the action is positive overall for the health of the community. Likewise, community design criteria were defined, understanding the square as a health space for the neighbourhood, divided into six large blocks: the creation of spaces for shade and socialising, guaranteeing coexistence in its different types of uses, the reduction of motorised traffic and its effects, the dilution of the limits of the health centre with the square and the neighbourhood, and sustainability. The proposal of these criteria, agreed by consensus among the spaces, was returned to the Monitoring Committee and the drafting team for technical validation and to assess which could be incorporated for implementation in the Roís de Corella square project.

• https://www.gandia.es/aytg/web_php/index.php?contenido=subapartados_woden&id_boto=1158&lang=1 (External link)