Citizen Participation in Balmaseda

In the municipality of Balmaseda, work was carried out in the public space and the buildings of the demonstrative district of the Historic District.

Within its participatory process, carried out both face-to-face and digitally, it has tried to involve different agents, from citizens in general to associations, specific groups (children, youth, elderly people, women, etc.), experts, and groups politicians.

The face-to-face participatory process was divided into two sessions, the S01 diagnostic focused on contrasting, consensus and prioritize, with its participants, the needs and opportunities detected, for a second S02 propositive session, focused on specifying and working on the detected proposals, analyzing its viability and agents involved in its implementation.

The first session S01 was held on March 14, 2018 at the Kultur Etxea in Balmaseda, with 30 participants, 15 women and 15 men, and the second session S02 took place on April 18 in the same space, with 15 participants of which 6 were women and 7 men.

The digital participation was carried out through the Citizen web platform developed by Createlli, open to the public from March 1 to May 15.

The participants, after completing their profile, accessed the consultation on different issues related to the two central themes of the public space and the buildings of the Historic District, with an affirmation format to show a degree of agreement.

We can conclude with the affirmation that the participatory process has fulfilled the established expectations. The public has been very active and participatory and they have come to define very interesting concrete measures to be considered by the town halls. On the other hand, citizens have known other experiences that have been carried out at a European level, valuing their replicability in their neighborhoods positively, coming to value the participatory process very positively.

For its part, we must highlight very positively the involvement throughout the participatory process of different types of agents, citizens, associations and municipal technicians, so that the adaptation measures proposed by the citizens have the direct involvement of the agents that they must apply them.