Thursday, April 22nd, Earth Day was celebrated. It is assumed that for Lanzarote it should be an important day, due to its reviled and forgotten condition as a complete biosphere reserve. It is also assumed that this identification should make us reflect on how we live and interact with the natural environment, generating avenues for debate that lead the island society to live in a sustainable way with the territory. Now let's look towards Arrecife, one of the ways to observe the dedication, awareness and involvement of the politics and society of a population with its environment, is to look at the state of its resources and public services. Let's start with a series of key points that I think are failing in the city.
Public trees and green areas:
If we look at Arrecife from a bird's eye view, the green areas are scarce and by green areas I do not only mean wooded areas, I want to refer to those public areas where vegetation is the protagonist, places where recreation and interaction of people with the natural environment are a reality. In Arrecife there is plenty of asphalt, concrete, vehicle agglomerations among many other things. There is a lack of green, places of shade and tranquility. Also point out the lack of pedestrian streets, murals and safe transit areas.
Our city should have an annual event sponsored by the institutions where society gets involved in the active revegetation of the gardens, as well as the areas or public plots in disuse. It would be an opportunity to generate a new type of festivity appropriate to the times, where ecology and sustainability are the main principles.
It is true that improvement actions are being carried out, such as the one being carried out in Tenderete street in Argana Alta, will this path be followed despite the troll opinion and politics?
Community structures, socio-cultural centers, libraries and social facilities:
The pandemic has revealed an uncomfortable reality, our city has an unemployment rate and a high percentage of people who do not make it to the end of the month, which makes it an inadmissible and inhuman reality. Many times this circumstance is overlooked, but there are many people who have nowhere to go and nothing to eat. Arrecife does not even have a soup kitchen, nor a public shelter. People who have less need to be cared for and helped to get ahead. How are they going to find work if the necessary help is not provided so that they have a dignified life?
The socio-cultural centers, like the civic center, should not be private spaces, they should be places where you can be, where you invite the different neighborhoods of the city to debate and talk to solve and demand improvements in their neighborhoods. Those population areas that are organized, want improvements and interact with the different communities, are the ones that end up fighting and demanding civic improvements. All of the above makes humanity grow and makes it easier to have a full life.
Today the 23rd is Book Day and it is a day to reflect on our libraries. Do we really have enough infrastructure like these in Arrecife? The few that exist as well as the available study areas border on overcrowding. We have to start generating not only book lending spaces but also build more study areas, work, projects and citizen laboratories. Neighborhoods must have their libraries but also spaces where people can study or create projects.
Arrecife is a centralized city, everything happens in its core and the population areas revolve marginally around that point. It is in the neighborhoods where most inhabitants reside, but where there is less infrastructure. There is a need to have the necessary facilities to create a fairer urban fabric.
Mobility, bicycle and public transport:
I don't know if you, dear readers, have done the exercise of transiting between the neighborhoods of Arrecife, if you have done so you will find that there are incredible areas, but others totally isolated and disconnected. Arrecife is not a big city, nor is it extensive and in general, it is a cohesive city. This means that it should be easy to transit and move through its different areas and neighborhoods... but nothing could be further from reality. To walk between the different areas of the city you have to go along sidewalks in poor condition, dangerous and with incoherent obstacles. I highly doubt that our city is a pleasant place for people with reduced mobility. It is a city that, more than for people, is made for cars.
If walking is an odyssey, finding bike lanes that connect the neighborhoods, for example, between Argana Alta and the neighborhood of La Vega, becomes a trip to the most Dantean Cocytus, not only because of the scarce and deficient road infrastructure dedicated to this purpose, but because of the null creation of awareness campaigns that make bicycle drivers understand the importance of following traffic rules. There really is a problem of road education and signage. Arrecife has everything to be a bike-friendly city, it has to position itself in the Canary environment as an example of adaptation to the times.
And public transport? Ineffective and unreal. Disconnected from the needs of the population, which makes it almost non-existent. These are the adjectives that define the current public transport service of the city. I will advance some of the conclusions of this opinion article, the most intelligent option is not to privatize or outsource the service, it is that the City Council together with the bordering urban areas of the city, create a public transport consortium. A company that meets the real needs of citizens. And going back to the previous topic, is it so complicated to create a municipal bicycle loan service?
Market, street markets and local shopping areas:
If we look at one of the sectors that should boost the local economy is the local and km0 commerce, where public management is conspicuous by its absence. In a city where industry is already non-existent, the promotion and aid to small businesses and small traders should be the norm and not a utopia like that of Thomas More.
All advanced cities that look to the future have and have a network of public markets, and in Arrecife, we only glimpse large surfaces and chains. Public centers dedicated to innovation, promotion and aid to local commerce generate a productive and resistant environment against the onslaught of possible economic crises. Public management creates a social service, capable of helping the neighbors to create solvent businesses with which to generate employment and increase the wealth of the city.
In the same way that a market as a building concentrates a large number of specialized businesses inside and brings business democratization closer to the citizens, public and non-privatized street markets as it is wanted to be done, makes those trades related to crafts, orchards and fresh products prosper. It is the duty of a City Council to defend this type of commercial structures, not to take pictures or provide tourists with one more attraction, but to protect and show citizens that they have more artisanal trades and professionals.
Small business is one of the cornerstones on which the wealth of a city is based and the democratization of generating business avenues. The institutions have to defend the people, many times the benefits and the economy are measured erroneously only in euros, but where are the indirect aspects that generate social wealth in the city?
Conclusion:
Many times the political class, the managers of the institutions as well as many citizens see in privatizations the panacea to improve the management of public services, but that is a fallacy. Who really benefits from a privatization? The answer is easy: large companies. At the beginning and in the studies, future plans and other documents, a privatization may seem like a good idea, the accounts add up and the public coffers seem to benefit from this mechanism. What happens if we look beyond the economic data and look to the future? The objective of a public service is to provide citizens with the necessary resources for a good vital and social development. The purpose of a private company is economic. Therefore, if a service is public, although a priori it may seem that it entails a monetary loss, the gain is greater. Let's take the example of electricity: imagine that an economic crisis arrives and a family becomes unemployed, they cannot pay the electricity. If the electricity company is public, it can pay for the service until the family can get jobs and pay their bill. If the service is privatized, if the bill is not paid, an economic loss is generated for the large company and therefore the electricity is cut off.
Privatizations are only contemplated from the monetary perspective in the short term, but no attention is paid to social and mutual purposes. If we observe wealth with scales such as social welfare, protection for those who have less and access to services, it is clear, public management will always be more positive. The example I have used serves for health, food markets, public transport and a long etc.
Arrecife has to advance and improve its public services, shielding them, structuring them and adapting them to contemporary needs. Only in this way can we generate a resistant culture in the face of the challenges and problems that may plague us.
PS: Remember that in our city we have local bookstores that know and have dedicated their lives to the book sector. The workers of these businesses will advise you in a professional way to find that book that unleashes the imagination and appeases the instinct of curiosity innate in humanity.
J. David Machado Gutiérrez
Expert in contemporary culture
