The Yaiza City Council has announced progress in the creation of its Technical Guide for Inclusive Playgrounds during the citizen participation day held on the afternoon of Wednesday, June 5, at the Uga Camel Interpretation Center.
The event was led by members of the team responsible for the preliminary study being conducted by the City Council and was attended by the Mayor of Yaiza, Óscar Noda, and the Councilor for Parks and Gardens, Rubén Arca, the expert in park design and accessibility, Eloy Bossom, representatives of the Creciendo Social Association and the Association of Deaf People of Arrecife and Lanzarote (APSAL), as well as residents interested in contributing their proposals.
As detailed during the day by Francesco Cocco and Francesca Raimondi, architects and members of the study team, they are currently conducting an audit to determine the level of accessibility and inclusion of the municipality's park network, taking as a sample 14 parks from different locations, which, together with the documentation provided by city council technicians and the information provided by citizens, in events like this and through the survey available on the institutional website.
It will allow them to create a detailed report to adapt a basic guide based on existing regulations to a specific one that covers all the real needs of the municipality, both for the creation of new inclusive play spaces and for adapting existing ones, also serving as a starting point for other municipalities.
In this sense, both highlighted the good response obtained from the local population with the survey, in which a large number of residents have already participated, and the importance of them remaining active in the process, since "we have a more technical vision and we must also know the opinion and needs of the users, those who live there and use the facilities, since each territory is different and their needs are also different, so knowing their experience and vision of how their parks and towns should be or how they want them to be is of vital importance to obtain the best results."
During the day, which included a sign language interpreter to facilitate communication with deaf people, they also took the opportunity to launch a new survey on several specific parks in the municipality, in order to detect deficiencies and main demands, in addition to assessing their "accessibility chain", since the study not only considers the needs within the park (access-circulate-play-rest and recover), but also access to them. "It is useless to have a wonderful and fully accessible and inclusive park if we cannot get to it from home, school, etc.", the experts point out.
The Councilor for the Area, Rubén Arca, thanks residents and associations for their attendance at the event and encourages "residents of Yaiza and also those who visit us from other municipalities on the island" to send them their impressions and suggestions for improvement through the survey available on the municipal website www.yaiza.es. "It is about, together, enriching this project and continuing to be a benchmark municipality on the island in terms of accessible and inclusive parks, and continuing to set a path that the rest of the institutions should follow."
The Mayor of Yaiza, Óscar Noda, thanks for his part "the high level of commitment of our residents" and emphasizes that "in Yaiza we are not satisfied with complying with the law in terms of accessibility and inclusion, but we want to go a step further and offer better facilities and access, so we take note of all the suggestions and concerns that they send us to make that leap in quality and well-being that our municipality and its inhabitants deserve. Other municipalities have already praised us and have been interested in the project and our goal is to continue being the model to follow. From Yaiza we have extended our hand, making our progress available to them, and we also invite the rest of the institutions to join us."
