Arrecife has been declining in terms of quality urban development for some time. I don't know how or who is making the decisions regarding the creation of urban spaces. Although I am sure that it does not have a plan beyond piling things in the same place.
Anyone who understands a little about composition in design will know that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts and that it is not always the sum of the parts. Anyone who knows a little about visual composition, distribution of elements in space or simply has some taste for harmony will suffer constant unease every time they walk through this city of ours.
To give an example, it is curious that from the sector that promotes the demolition of the city's cultural and historical heritage - they call them old houses - it is argued that its protection is guided by "whims" rather than technical reasoning. In addition, it demands that urban planners decide what has historical and cultural value as the final solution. At this point, I think what they really want is an "urban planner" à la carte that satisfies their interests. Perhaps, it should be explained to that sector that urban planning is something greater than the sum of the parts and is always the sum of the parts. The urban planner they want does not exist; especially because if he existed he would not be an urban planner.
The urban planner - the one they don't want - has a global vision of the whole. He knows that urban projection is the convergence of different perspectives and the confluence of different technical, social and environmental aspects. The urban planner they don't want knows that an orderly, resilient and forward-looking city is the sum of many parts to take into account; he cannot imagine a city in which its historical and cultural part has no place, for example. He is part of a multidisciplinary team that handles data, reports, surveys, diagnoses, indicators, etc., in which there is talk of proximity, visibility, security, inclusion; where the urban scene and its scenarios, its habitability and comfort, or, on the contrary, its degree of hostility are considered. This urban planner promotes and encourages participatory processes because he is clear that solutions cannot be applied without broad and high citizen participation. Likewise, he knows that it is from there that spaces, the environment... the city begin to be built.
What opinion will the sector that advocates the "postcardization" of the city, leaving three or four pretty facades for the photo, have on urban regeneration, social cohesion, re-naturalization, functional equity, inversion of the urban mobility pyramid, community environments, governance and participation, adaptation of the city to climate change, visual and light pollution, etc. In any case, if there is one thing I share with that sector, it is that Arrecife needs urban planners. I think we have them and good ones. In the Canary Islands, people are talking in those terms and some municipalities are already moving towards that horizon. There is technical staff in the town halls who have understood that the direction to be followed is the one that leads to a truly resilient and sustainable urbanity, in which both technical and social, economic and environmental aspects are combined. Understanding that the construction of a city necessarily involves the participation of the majority of social agents, that it must always have a human scale and a balance with nature is a first step towards hope.
However, what we lack is a political class with the capacity to understand the meaning of the common good and that the whole is something greater than the sum of the parts; that the city is not built by the parties but by society and that the interests of a few cannot define its future. Citizens have the right to the city, to enjoy it, to live it and to build it.
