Green Torreblanca verde for social and human development in the neighborhood
Together making a neighborhood more beautiful, greener, more sustainable, more livable and inclusive ...
it means self-construction by the residents of their naturalized neighborhood, with the technical support of the young environmental designers of the Tar group of the University of Seville; EPS, and with the Civic Center of Torreblanca - Juan Antonio González Caraballo of the Civic Center of Torreblanca City Council of Seville that leads the social movement in the neighborhood.
Local
Spain
Torreblanca is a working class neigbourhood of City Council of Seville, Andalucia, Spain.
Mainly urban
It refers to other types of transformations (soft investment)
No
No
Yes
2023-12-01
As a representative of an organisation
Name of the organisation(s): Universidad de Sevilla Type of organisation: University or another research institution First name of representative: Julian Last name of representative: Lebrato Martínez Gender: Male Nationality: Spain Function: teacher / researcher Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Virgen de África 7 Town: Sevilla Postal code: 41.011 Country: Spain Direct Tel:+34 664 44 25 34 E-mail:grupotar@us.es Website:https://aula.aguapedia.org/
Torreblanca is repeatedly over time one of the four neighborhoods with the lowest average income in Spain.
Participatory actions carried out among the neighbors and friends of Torreblanca verde.
The Green Week, the I Popular Race, the Interpreted Walks of Jane Jacobs, the I and II Contest of balconies, shop windows, patios and rooftops,
Talleres on the street planting pots.
Annex 1.- Portfolio of actions Green Torreblanca verde.
Soil: social gardens
The gardeners of Green Torreblanca verde, 30 organic gardens self-managed by families in the neighborhood, have become a nature school in the city.
Water. Get to know your river in the experimental pond/stream of Ramiche.
It is developed in the irrigation pond of the social gardens, which has naturalized green Torreblanca and is located inside the Sports Center, where it is protected with mesh and access door.
https://aula.aguapedia.org/pluginfile.php/11209/mod_label/intro/WhatsApp%20Video%202023-01-20%20at%2013.37.32%20%282%29.mp4
Air: Refuge, garden and Walk of the butterflies Juan Saura.
Construction of the Garden and the area dedicated to the "Refuge of the butterflies" to create a space in which an ecosystem that generates natural wealth through native butterflies, insects and plants is favored.
Reforestation: More than 100 trees have been planted, bred, watered with love on the edge of the Canal de los presos on Paseo Juan Saura.
Light / Color: The mural and mosaics of the butterflies.
the realization by the citizens themselves of more than one hundred meters painted mural of the butterflies in the Paseo Juan Saura, directed by the Civic Center and Art and art, a company that gave technical support.
https://aula.aguapedia.org/mod/resource/view.php?id=2679
Two mosaics built by the students and teachers of the School of Art of Seville have been mounted, in June 2021 and another in 2022.
Approximate PARTICIPANTS: 1,000 People
EXECUTION. till 2017 to 2022.
1.- Engineering to transform: it has been configured in the ROOM OF IDEAS where Torreblanca verde is co-designed between the community and the young Tar technicians. Engineering to transform. https://aula.aguapedia.org/pluginfile.php/11102/mod_resource/content/2/transformapedia%20ingles.pdf
2.- Self-construction / self-financing / participation:
Based on these two concepts:
2.1.- Self-construction and / or local and shared construction: everything designed must be appropriable and buildable by the community or locally.
2.2.- With accessible materials from the nearby environment, which generate lower costs and CO2 emissions into the atmosphere.
To this end, a workshop of tools and small machines has been established in the social gardens, which allow working in community. All the actions have been made with the participants' own means and very small contributions from the University of Seville and other institutions.
3.- IDENTITY: in this neighborhood the elderly are very respected, cared for and enjoyed in the family and their neighborhood environment, so grandmothers have been chosen as a driving factor of the identity of the green neighborhood for this demonstrated ability they have to raise the neighborhood back in green.
4.- Human and social development: which is linked to the confluence of all the above factors that generate a considerable improvement in the self-esteem of the neighborhood, which we are measuring over time, and its visualization from the outside.
5.- Attraction / technological and social transfer: the sustainability over time of the project is managed as an open Naturalization Classroom:
5.1.- Environmental education: Aquariums, terrariums, butterfly gardens have been built to make it easier for citizens to connect with the nature
. Annex 2.- Naturalized devices.
5.2.- Classroom for training of technicians: Torreblanca verde has been configured as a learning opportunity for technicians in urban naturalization.
The participatory murals in the Butterfly Refuge have transformed what the neighbors treated as a garbage dump into a pleasant place to walk.... and most surprising, NO ONE HAS SPOILED A SINGLE BUTTERFLY, NOT A GRANDMOTHER IN THE MURALS OF THE STREETS, AGAINST THE NEGATIVE OMENS OF THE NEIGHBORS THEMSELVES, DISCOURAGED BY A HISTORY OF FIRES, GARBAGE AND CONTEMPT FOR THE PLACE. It has also been novel to see municipal cleaning services cleaning where they had never before.
The small / great miracle achieved by the AESTHETICS OF BUTTERFLIES AND GRANDMOTHERS is worthy of study and so we are doing it to see it in time.
A similar answer we have with the Grandmothers of Torreblanca painted on the walls of the neighborhood, near the home of each of those chosen as representative. They have not been harmed by anyone in the two years they have been on the streets and are a source of pride and EDUCATION for all of us.
In the portraits of "The grandmothers of Torreblanca", made by the students and professors of the Faculty of Fine Arts doing street painting with 8 grandmothers, a grandfather and a character representing the neighborhood, Salvador Valverde, composer of Spanish copla, exiled by Franco's coup d'état of 1939 that gives its name to the central square of the neighborhood. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QpcjA6mgmc. Annex 3.
We must add the forest of messages, Annex 4. Forest of messages, recreation of the mother forest of life, which is a creation of the School of Art of Seville in the Civic Center, which visualizes the mother forest in aesthetic and artistic key for the young people of the neighborhood.
https://aula.aguapedia.org/pluginfile.php/11136/mod_label/intro/WhatsApp%20Video%202023-01-11%20at%2013.37.33.mp4
Surely you have to live the neighborhood from within to feel what it means for most of the humble people to see that it is winning or the pleasant. coexistence based on its beauty respected by ALL in a very complicated environment.
Physical and sensory:
The project is especially accessible to people of different abilities so that they can easily enter naturalization, thus enhancing sensory perception for all neighbors:
Blind with 3D figures that allow them to touch what they do not see. Annex 5.- 3D fish and the sounds of birds with José Carlos Sires,
https://elclickverde.com/reportajes/el-escuchante-de-aves
Reduced mobility for those who have worktables in the garden and pond with adapted access.
Deaf with sign language and
Down Children, with garden workshops and their own natural products in connection with the project. Annex 6.- Down's syndrome vegetable patch
In the social gardens, in the pond and in the Juan Saura promenade in the reforestation, the association of Autistic Sevilla has been working for years.
Geographic
The project is open to different environments, starting with immigrant refugees who have a residence in the neighborhood and participate assiduously in all activities, CEAR Association, https://www.cear.es/, and in the network of green neighborhoods around the world led by green Torreblanca verde.
Natural:
Access to nature in the neighborhood itself, the axis of naturalization, connects neighbors with their biological heritage of the "mother forest of life" and generates net increases in biodiversity in the environment. Annex 3.- Naturalizedens devices.
Cultural
The Book Fair I and II edition, plus the permanent fair in the shops (more than 5,000 books distributed at no cost to the neighbors in each year), the exhibition Salvador Valverde, the composer of Spanish Copla exiled from Franco, which gives its name to the square, added to the forest of messages built with the wishes of the children of the schools in the Civic Center, And the murals of the grandmothers in the streets and the butterflies in the lights configure the neighborhood as, a whole that works as a hook to the enjoyment of knowledge.
The great accessibility and citizen support of green Torreblanca is configured as a generator of community activities, but it also attracts projects and transfers innovative proposals that visualize the neighborhood and increase the self-esteem of its neighbors. Therefore, establishing a university activity project in a neighborhood like ours is a clear factor of transformation and an objective engine of local development. Thus green Torreblanca lays the foundations for the University of Seville and the City Council of Seville to establish the TORREBLANCA VERDE EXPERIMENTAL CAMPUS IN URBAN NATURALIZATION: Both institutions will support the performance in the neighborhood of their practical teaching programs and R+D+I groups and the associations participatory movements in a real environment in full transformation to green. Annex 7 Experimental campus
The relevance of the proposal to both institutions on our part is based on the following preliminary premises:
1.- The participation in the project of students and teachers from different centers of the University of Seville in Torreblanca verde
2.- The visualization of the impact that the Torreblanca verde program has on the improvement of the quality of life of the neighborhood and its great acceptance by the neighbors.
3.- The certainty that cities in Europe are naturalizing at high speed requires specific training that is born of a very applied innovation and offers a joint opportunity for the City Council and the University of Seville to lead the transformation of their neighborhoods and the parallel training of technicians on the reality of the neighborhoods to be naturalized
For this reason, the joint creation of the experimental campus of Torreblanca verde in urban naturalization will put Seville in a position to support the transformation of other environments in the city itself, but also European and in Latin America, as glimpsed in the Network of green neighborhoods around the world that is in formation
The project has support at all administrative levels in Spain:
Seville City Council:
It actively participates from the Civic Center, with a specific program of green Torreblanca in its activities. This support is crucial to generate community support and human and social development in the neighborhood.
Andalusian Regional Government, Junta de Andalucía:
Ministry of agriculture, fisheries, water and rural development with the provision of plants and seedlings for the reforestation carried out.
Ministry of Education
Public schools, 5. Private school 1. School of Art del. Pavilion of Chile, Seville, a strategic support in the aesthetic development of the project.
University of Seville, public, with the provision of the project of the group Tar, https://investigacion.us.es/sisius/sis_showpub.php?idpers=2324 and support from the Development Cooperation Office https://cooperacion.us.es/ and research groups from the following centers:
Etsas, School of architecture, for the development of the green plot.
Eps, Polytechnic School, to design green Torreblanca and open new research paths.
BB.AA. Faculty of Fine Arts, a strategic support in the aesthetic development of the project.
School of agronomic engineering, to design the green streets and the Paseo Juan Saura.
Faculty of Biology, to learn about plants and animals.
Pablo de Olavide University, public, with its degrees in Social Work, Sociology and Environmental Sciences.
Central Government, Ministry for the technological transition and the demographic challenge of the nation. through the Guadalquivir Hydrographic Confederation, responsible for watching over the Canal de los Prisioners, or the lower Guadalquivir, which has granted us to work on reforestation and forestry on all sides of it as it passes through Torreblanca.
Annex 8.- Support from the Guadalquivir Hydrographic Confederation.
The dynamics of action / participation that permeates the project mixes in each action all the people and their knowledge with tolerance and permanent exchange to achieve an exciting common project:
The popular knowledge of the neighbors of the neighborhood, many older people lived before in villages and rural environments and preserve the knowledge and taste for nature.
Industrial design, to design proposals that technically support community debate in anticipation of implementation.
Environmental Engineering: naturalizing needs to assume the double reality of a concreted city and the mother forest that we carry in our genetic inheritance.
Team in charge: Grupo Tar, University of Seville, Bosque Anxanar.
Sociology: to know the existing social dynamics in the neighborhood and where you want to go in the transformation.
Social integration: to make a more inclusive, participatory and open neighborhood that integrates all groups in the project.
Team in charge: Ángel Luis Álvarez Aguja, Torreblanca Civic Center. Ángeles García, Prodelvu.
Biology: to close cycles in what we call circular economy it is necessary to learn from natural cycles, Carbon, Nitrogen, Phosphorus, Sulfur and microelements.
Ecology: to increase the biodiversity of the neighborhood, the interrelationships between living beings and the earth must be known.
Team in charge: Jesús Castillo, Professor of Ecology, University of Seville;
Leonardo Casasola, Antonio Peláez, Arturo Sotelo, Cajas nido Sevilla.
Manolo García, Master garden Down.
Urbanism: transforming the neighborhood into green requires prior knowledge of the interactions of the neighbors with the territory where they live.
Team in charge: Ángel González Morales, School of Architecture, University of Seville.
Fine Arts and School of Art: the aesthetics that generate self-esteem in the neighborhood is transversal in all performances.
Team in charge: Carmen Andreu, Fine Arts, University of Seville
To make a green neighborhood we must previously "green" citizens, this is the first and best result of the project: the increase of contact with nature of its neighbors.
The second derivative of the project is linked to the obligatory transformation into green of European cities that offers Torreblanca a leadership in Seville capital that serves as an example of how to do and visualizes it as an example of citizenship to follow.
But the transformation is also marked in two complementary lines:
Improvement of citizen behavior in their environment, with increasingly civilized attitudes, with the enjoyment of plants, animals and the mural of butterflies that give color and happiness in their environment.
Encouragement for municipal cleaning services that, for example, have included the Butterfly Refuge and Park in their circuits of action.
A direct consequence of the project is the sensitization of the different administrations to join Torreblanca verde led by the neighbors and friends of the neighborhood.
Impact: Green Torreblanca leads a network of green neighborhoods around the world:
Spain, Latinoamerica, and África.
Annex 9.- Network of green neighborhoods around the world.
Social innovation, based on that strategy of action / participation that puts neighbors and friends to work to actively shape their future, managing their green neighborhood and learning to solve their problems in community as the best form of human and social development
For their part, the Tar group and the company Bosque Anxanar based on what they have learned in this project have carried out innovative work in neighborhoods of different cities:
Bosque Anxanar: Participation in projects.
The projectL for the revitalization of the Las Palmeras neighborhood in Cordoba, Spain, and the realization of workshops.
Terpenes in the Air, hired Bosque Anxanar SL to carry out a training workshop on natural cosmetics "Terpenes in the Air" in the neighborhood of La Candelaria, Seville, Spain.
The Tar group: participates in projects in neighborhoods of Spain, Latin America and in the D.R. of Congo in Africa.
And together they have developed two new lines of research:
Atmospheric plant test chamber for air quality improvement:
to measure different pollutants by comparing the standard air with the air exposed to the action of the tested plant, in tests of trees and shrubs (sample of branches) and plants (leaf sample).
https://aula.aguapedia.org/pluginfile.php/11105/mod_resource/content/2/C%C3%A1mara%20atmosf%C3%A9rica%20-%20Sub%20Ingl%C3%A9s.mp4
Ramiche Pond
The basis of the action is an innovative breakwater system developed for green Torreblanca by the Tar and Bosque Anxanar groups, which supports the very vertical riparian plants and thus these feed on the water and generate new roots that oxygenate the water.
In our pond we are developing, in a very novel way, the Test of repopulation techniques of aquatic species in danger of extinction.
https://aula.aguapedia.org/pluginfile.php/11209/mod_label/intro/WhatsApp%20Video%202023-01-20%20at%2013.37.32%20%282%29.mp4
The naturalization of the neighborhood for the human and social development of the community through actions for the transformation of soil, water, air and light / color, from a point of view of health, training, biodiversity, energy efficiency, resource and waste management and social development so that they generate a new IDENTITY OF TORREBLANCA VERDE.
The tools used are:
Engineering to transform, from the Tar group has been developed for many years engineering for people, which has been applied in many environments of different European, Latin American and African countries
https://aula.aguapedia.org/pluginfile.php/11102/mod_resource/content/2/transformapedia%20ingles.pdf
Collaborative design, engineering for people forces a collaborative design embedding ourselves among the neighborhood community, establishing a coworking strategy that introduces more and more neighbors in the transformative work of it.
Innovation, if you want to advance in entrenched problems in European and Spanish society, things must be done with a radically different approach and in our group this collaborative design faces with the innovative method Tar for Action / participation.
Action: You must know the reality of the neighborhood from a transformative point of view, extract the essence of it to design the Action that is configured as a hook for the community in order to start proposals for participation of the neighbors around the generic objective of green Torreblanca that add more participation inside and outside Torreblanca.
- Action / Participation:
Social, environmental problem from the citizen point of view, we must see the problem from above and act more than talk:
Starting point, real need to solve.
Means and possibilities, priorities.
Design of a first ACTION that adds more community to citizen PARTICIPATION and together work on a
Human and social development based ON SELF-CONSTRUCTION of the proposals.
Engagement of more support and institutions.
1.- The participation action has involved in Green Torreblanca Verde a large part of the neighborhood and many friends from all over in a strategy of facing actions from the beginning, followed by diagnoses of the situation, and according to the results go refining the subsequent designs while continuing to act.
2.- Development of pilot actions of self-construction type green streets, planting plants in the streets of the neighbors, which continuously hook more neighbors and friends to the project.
https://aula.aguapedia.org/pluginfile.php/11228/mod_resource/content/0/Calles%20verdes18.pdf
3.- Centralize the project in the elderly of the neighborhood, with the recovery of their knowledge and affection for their family and neighborhood environment.
4.-From the work of the Ramiche pond we have learned to carry out in collaboration with an innovative work in the temporary lagoons of Seville East, which are threatened with construction of a residential urbanization and contain up to five species of amphibians in danger of extinction. Annex 12- Temporary lagoons of Seville east.
5.- Design of the naturalization of the neighborhood with the support of Torreblanca verde and the integration into the Green Neighborhoods Network around the world, if it seems appropriate, with the specifications of each neighborhood in particular.
6.- Definition of an emblematic activity in each section of the life of the neighborhood, examples: soil / social garden, water / naturalized pond, air / forest and vegetable walk and light / color in the streets, participatory murals.
7.- Involve as much as possible the schools of the neighborhood, the little ones pull the whole family and the future of the community.
8.- Develop "green water islands" in the neighborhood, later they will be joined by green / water corridors to make their urban green mesh.
Strengthening of citizen alliances and restoration of green and blue infrastructure to promote the natural and cultural biodiversity of urban bio-oasis in the south of the Iberian Peninsula by communitary participation. Annex 13.-
Also, the Doñana Park has all the existing conservation figures in the European Union. Therefore, given the threat posed to the Park by climatic events linked to global change, it is necessary to develop NOVEL strategies for its conservation.
From green Torreblanca we propose to make a green corridor / water between Torreblanca and the Doñana National Park through the Canal de los presos that carries irrigation water from the Guadalquivir, from Sierra Morena in Peñaflor to Lebrija (both in Seville), in front of the Park.
The participatory work of Torreblanca verde in the reforestation and vegetation with interesting species for feeding migratory birds in the Paseo Juan Saura along the Canal and in the naturalization of the Ramiche pond has generated knowledge at the local level that opens possibilities at a global level in participatory design and social support necessary for the future Green Water Corridor.
1.- Bird protection zone.
2.- Design of the socio-cultural environment, with a bird observatory.
This project generated from learning in action / neighborhood participation will generate two synergistic effects:
"Green Torreblanca, Door to Doñana in Seville"
In times of scarcity, through the Canal the Doñana Park will be offered a novel sheet of water and two large lagoons for migratory birds.
And it opens future perspectives to design the Canal de los presos as a green water corridor between Doñana and the Sierra Morena mountains, where the canal is born in Peñaflor (Seville), which generates connectivity for the Park in an action that must involve all administrations.
