Building Social Parks A proposal for urban nodes of inclusion in Buenos Aires by Guillermo Tella, PhD
Institute of the Conurbation, National University of General Sarmiento (Argentina)
This involves the creation of a legal framework that assigns responsibilities and powers of action, and ensures the implementation of efficient management mechanisms which include citizen participation and compromise. It also involves the development of mechanisms for financing and promotion of public, private and mixed investment.
will not be subject to nor depend on the political alternation or departmental management, either. On that basis, we have attempted to articulate the various agents of the local population, who are often confronting or not necessarily cohesive among them. On the one hand, one of the main problems of physical order of the area is the lack of public spaces and green areas. On the other hand, the neighborhood, gifted with largest traditional independent theater circuit of Buenos Aires (which, a couple of years ago, numbered twenty-two), has begun to decrease in number due to the closure of facilities that could not be adapted to the security measures required after the catastrophe of Cromañón. If public space is a 'container concept' as it has been defined, it also represents by such means and by that figure, the area where the necessary points of rendezvous can be found, for the benefit of coexistence and mutual enhancement of actions.
- Recovery strategies: the area of historic centers is going through a crisis that compromises the quality of habitat. Therefore, policies and programs are required to promote urban renewal, anti-dilapidation and de-slumming, environmental restoration, public security, the generation of employment opportunities, neighborhood and citizen participation, the fostering of bonds of solidarity and reciprocity among various agents, and the consolidation of the multiethnic and multicultural spaces that make centers living areas open to creativity and diversity.
Photo courtesy Guillermo Tella
The building of ‘Abasto Social Park’
The Social Park installs the local community as the star of the local processing
Undoubtedly, these strategies install local government as a strong agent, to coordinate and implement development policies. Dependent upon the possibilities and feasibilities of operation of this project amid the political situation described, we have considered the possibility of a proposal to build a citizen network identified with Abasto, which will of execution
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In order to provide a response for this multiplicity of factors at play, an action plan was begun to be developed which aims, firstly, to create a permanent territorial management unit and, secondly, to build a system of social containment nodes for the families of the neighborhood and for a cultural promotion to make it an alternative to traditional circuits. Thus, 'Abasto Social Park' takes shape, which retrieves the pre-existing identity and installs the local community as the protagonist of local transformation. The first concrete experience meant to generate nodes for inclusion in areas of segregation have been recently developed in the neighborhood La Estrella, in the municipality of San Miguel, in the second metropolitan belt ring of Buenos Aires, and was called 'Social Park'. Its aim was to organize the local community to enable it to recover for itself social values in conflict, such as: competitiveness and cooperation, solidarity and commitment, safety and recreation, training and labor, future and present.