Participatory Analysis of the Living Environment: The Plus Ultra Neighborhood

With the context of a joint European academic program, during the secondsemester of the academic year 2010-2011 we have carried out a participatorypedagogic program in the Plus Ultra neighborhood in Barcelona withthe participation of students and citizens. This program was part of a networkof learning activities carried out in collaboration with five Europeanschools of architecture and urban planning.The neighbourhood consists of a group of low-rise houses constructed bythe first settlers in the 1930s. From that time on, the neighbourhood hasundergone a considerable transformation: in the surrounding fields housingblocks have been built, leaving the old Plus Ultra neighbourhood like anisland in the middle of a newly built environment; a leftover from anothertime. The city urban planning office has elaborated a special plan to replacethe existing buildings, while maintaining some of the spatial and formal featureswhich characterize the settlement. However, neighbours have reactedagainst this plan since considering that part of their lives would go awaywith these buildings. Emotional, but also financial interests – discussion onthe value of their properties, having to move somewhere else during the timeof construction– are behind the neighbours’ claims.We thought that the on-going debate provided an opportunity for citizens andacademics to engage themselves in a common study on the value and significanceof dwelling in our contemporary societies. Students –guided by theirtutors– helped the neighbours to externalize and communicate their views, perceptions,and experiences about their dwellings and their live in the neighbourhood.Somehow, students played the role of mediators between the neighboursand the city administrators by creating the conditions that favoured dialogue.A series of learning activities were designed specifically with the followingpurposes:- To collect first hand information from the inhabitants regarding theperceptions and experiences of their living environment- To provide citizens with the appropriate methods and tools to expressand communicate their perceptions of their living environment- To promote citizens’ participation in the urban planning processTo achieve these goals, we used different kinds of techniques: meetings withcitizens in the neihghborhood, recorded video interviews, narrations, schematicrepresentations of the urban spaces and dwellings, and photo elicitation.The information obtained was discussed and analyzed in the classroom, andthen communicated to the community though a blog specially created to supportthis pedagogical experience.At the end of the semester, the knowledge collectively acquired was presentedto the neighbourhood in a public presentation structured in the followingthemes: dwelling, memory, community, being rooted to a place, offeringresistance, public space, accessibility, limits, and density. This pedagogicalexperience involving students and citizens caught the interest of the localpress which dedicated an article to report on the work done.

Volume Editors
Martha Thorne & Xavier Costa

ISBN
978-0-935502-83-1