Co-creation and citizen’s participation are the backbone of the drOp project. That’s why the implementation of the Integrated Renovation Methodology in Ermua has incorporated citizens and local stakeholders’ perspective from the initial stages.
This has been done through a series of participatory workshops partially based on previous experiences from the Smartencity project. The first workshop was an introductory session with the objective of explaining the project and gathering a broad vision of the neighbourhood’s residents regarding district’s needs, challenges and opportunities.
A second workshop was arranged with the key stakeholders of Ermua municipality to work on the long-term vision of the Santa Ana neighbourhood. Four scenarios resulted for Santa Ana Vision 2035, and they included descriptions of the four dimensions of drOp project: environment (built environment), economy, society and culture and digitalisation.
Taking these potential future scenarios as a starting point, a workshop with citizens and district local agents was organized. The objective was to envision a common feasible and desirable scenario for the neighbourhood in 2035, for all the four dimensions mentioned above. The resulting master scenario included urban accessibility, more green areas with outdoor and indoor living spaces and the digitalization as a tool to improve people’s quality of life as some of its key elements.
The next step was a co-creation workshop aiming at identifying priorities and lines of action to progress towards the agreed master scenario. For this, local stakeholders from different areas of expertise and technicians of the municipality were invited to the session. Some of the future initiatives that could be deployed in the district that emerged were: contests for ideas to remodel neighbourhood spaces, intergenerational camps, training in digital tools or awareness-raising campaigns in energy communities.
The project will now enter into the design phase in which the projects will be prioritized and co-created with the citizens.
