The Mobility Conference begins, claiming to focus on the "displacement of people"

Urban planner and sustainable mobility expert Alfonso Sanz Alduán has called for "a change of glasses that allows us to look at mobility not as a problem of road traffic and parking space, but as the management of people's displacement." This is what he defended at the 1st Mobility Conference that started this Thursday in Arrecife. The expert advocated for "making urban planning consistent with the discourse of no to oil."

Sanz Alduán's presentation opened these 1st Conference and future workshop "Let's change urban mobility", an activity "for citizen reflection" organized by the Mobility and Transport areas of the Arrecife City Council and the Cabildo of Lanzarote.

Among the many data provided by the expert, the average time each vehicle remains parked, 97 percent of its useful life, was striking. "This has generated the main problem in cities, where cars are left during all that time; together with the demand for public parking space by their owners, something that is not in the Charter of Human Rights," he said.

"Participation is not consultation, they are spaces for conversation"

In this line, the speaker stated that the management of parking, both in the reduction of spaces and in the collection for the use of public space "is the great transforming tool of mobility habits in cities." "In that sense, Arrecife should not be left out of the ideas of sustainable urban planning," he defended.

Sanz Alduán advocated for generating "reflection and citizen debate, as changes in habits require time and pedagogy." "But we must take into account that participation is not consultation, it is not asking yes or no, but spaces for conversation. Children are not asked, but their perspective is very different from that of adults," he added.

Opening with full capacity

The Municipal Archive of Arrecife registered a full capacity in this first session of these conferences, which are held from this Thursday to Saturday in that space and in the Civic Center of Arrecife. In the opening ceremony, the president of the Cabildo, Pedro San Ginés, highlighted planning and social participation "as necessary tools for changing the perception of urban mobility."

To achieve this objective, he highlighted the "training and reflection spaces with meetings like this one that begins this morning and that confirms that Arrecife has a solution and this involves sustainable mobility." For his part, the accidental mayor, Rafael Juan González, assured that "these conferences are an opportunity to decide together what city model we want for the future."

González defended the recovery of public spaces and the "coexistence" between the vehicle and the pedestrian, "with a view to the progressive reduction of the environmental and territorial impacts of traffic."

Presentation of the new bus routes

Until Saturday, the conferences will host presentations, a dialogue walk along the Avenida Marítima and working tables for debate and consensus, with the presence of the main social sectors.

In addition, this Friday morning the new route of the Arrecife bus routes and the new vehicles financed by the Cabildo of Lanzarote will be presented, two buses and a minibus that will be operational on that same day.

González also recalled in his speech the importance of addressing the needs of people with reduced mobility, "a fundamental engine in the current major changes that are being undertaken in public space."

During the talk, attended by about fifty people, numerous examples of urban transformations of greater or lesser depth were offered, all of them aimed at giving greater prominence to people in cities and reducing the weight and presence of private vehicles.