Let's order Arrecife, let's plan a city for the people of Arrecife

January 8 2019 (08:40 WET)

Arrecife deserves to be a city for the people, an orderly and planned city thinking about coexistence and well-being. A city where the streets are a inhabited space, a stage for life in common. We must urgently recover the spaces for coexistence, the places for everyone, the life of the squares, avenues and streets. We must create trees and shadows, friendly spaces, places to talk. A safe city, where women can «return alone», children walk to school and the elderly have their benches in the sun. Let's talk about a city with a future by talking about the future of the city. May Arrecife know where it is going, above the whims of those who govern at any given moment.

We hear, especially from those who boast of wanting to conserve our territory, talk about urban planning and sustainability as if they were empty mantras. It has been the lack of order and planning that has allowed the leaders of our city throughout history to make contradictory, capricious and, above all, unprincipled decisions. We must recognize that in many cases Arrecife gives the image of a set of patches, ideas and projects fitted without success in a puzzle without harmony or aesthetics. We must recover the beauty of Arrecife, because as citizens we want to enjoy beautiful places. How is it possible that under the mask of the defense of the territory the construction of a disordered city has been promoted, with poor communications and lacking adequate services for its inhabitants. Let's stop using planning and urbanism as weapons. Let's use them as what they are, tools for a better life.

We work for an Arrecife that takes advantage of its land as a scarce commodity, that provides and qualifies its free spaces as areas of recreation and enjoyment for the residents. We are committed to growth in height, which consumes less land and facilitates mobility, which rationalizes spending and generates less wear and tear. We cannot continue to waste land. As islanders we know well what that means. Let's return to a city where it is attractive to go out on the street. A friendly city, with spaces for coexistence and accessible and efficient public services.

Arrecife has essential pieces of land for its development that cannot continue to be the protagonists of that old film of neglect. El Francés, Ginory or the spaces of the Medular must be ordered in such a way that they form part of the city and the feeling of belonging of its people. Let's recognize once and for all the rights of its owners and postulate development models that allow its total or partial enjoyment by the citizens.

Arrecife must recover its history linked to the sea and its traditional activities. Let's go back to the vestiges of what we were from free uses: the salt industry or fishing and its canning industry. Let's negotiate with the ownership of those jewels of our history to recover remnants of the life of the capital, but using the municipal coffers from the balance. 

One more thing: Arrecife is more than its marina and its center, Arrecife is also its neighborhoods. A plan is needed to reintegrate the neighborhoods into the city. Planned neighborhoods equipped with all services. We have private land to order that should allow us, through well-dimensioned transfers to the public, to generate networks of public services that guarantee the mobility and accessibility of residents in equal conditions.

Urbanism and the General Plan are the tools that will allow us to provide ourselves with the infrastructures and services that, as a city, we continue to lack. Arrecife needs health, educational and cultural services: the answer lies in the strategy and the plan, to be able to decide how, where and when they should be developed. The lack of housing, health and educational centers or leisure spaces are a consequence of the lack of planning. The City Council is obliged to solve these problems, and for this it must acquire the necessary land and the appropriate strategies.

Arrecife needs aesthetic and conservation ordinances for the facades and heritage that, together with lines of subsidies that facilitate it, contribute to the recovery for the city of the harmonic aesthetics that characterizes the Island of Lanzarote. White walls, plastered facades, ordered cables, wide sidewalks without potholes and constructive criteria that make the city recognizable from the moment we enter it.

In short, we must work to develop a friendly, orderly and «even» city. Let's recover the essence of the cared for Arrecife of our grandparents. Let's order Arrecife, let's plan a city for the people of Arrecife. Let's do it: LANZAROTICEMOS ARRECIFE

 

By Echedey Eugenio, Candidate of Coalición Canaria to the Mayoralty of Arrecife

 

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