URBANERÍA: Making Public Space Personal

A look into a community led project to sustainably revitalize public space in La Paz, Mexico.

In a cloud of dust, the golden hour in La Paz’s El Manglito neighborhood casts a dusty golden filter illuminating a small park. In stark contrast to it’s surrounding dirt lot and trashed alleyway is a series of DIY communal creations: painted wooden benches, an array of painted tires housing plants, a broken tire swing, and horizontal tree.

Here in stands the passion project of Lucia Corral, the founder of Urbanería: a 4 year old initiative to channel the power of people to improve under-utilized public spaces through collective funding and participatory processes that involve the community.

A Journey Reconstructed

With a background in Marine Biology, Lucia’s intended trajectory never hinted at urban development, but many years working with Niparaja, an NGO formed to preserve ecological integrity while providing for the well being of Baja California Sur’s people allowed her to see the potential in community engagement.

On her 30th birthday, she decided to leave her job to wholeheartedly begin her own project — although she didn’t yet know what that would be.

“On my 30th birthday, I quit my job that I loved — I knew I wanted to something with cities. So I went to Portland, to try and enter the Urban Planning Master’s Degree — but I didn’t get in.

I loved Portland — that people were very involved in the community, starting projects with nothing but a marker and piece of paper — I thought we can do that! And I thought, we can it better, because they have everything whereas we have nothing!

While in Portland, I met a friend who started a project with a pen and piece of a paper — a bike train in which he started taking kids to school on bikes, in which he would set up stops and then every morning, go to every stop and pick up kids and take them to school. When I went to Portland I couch surfed at his house and helped him with those signs and invitations and the next day we went to get the kids, but not many kids where there. But then, months later, it became a movement in Portland. Now, when you go to schools in Portland, they are filled with bikes.

I became very motivated and thought that I could start something.”

That kindred spirit in Portland — Kiel Johnson, founder of Bike Train PDX — helped Lucia to utilize rejection from the Master’s program to dwell into the world of urban planning on her own terms.

The genesis of Urbanería began serendipitously through a project from Arizona State University, which had remaining funds from a research project and wanted to see the ways in which La Paz could use it towards a water project in La Paz.

“I was informed of this and I proposed a tactical urbanism project in a dry river. They said okay, let’s see what happens… I wanted to make a linear park on the Arroyo so people would respect the environment.

It was a one time project to use the leftover money, but then people started asking about the next project, and that’s how Urbanería began.”

The Curious Case of Public Space

The exponential growth that has occupied La Paz has led to scarcity of an essential resource: public space. With more people moving to the city and with increasingly smaller homes, the need for sites for recreation, conviviality, rest and communication is essential.

The rate of growth of a city exceeds the capacity of governments to address the need to create and maintain public spaces. Urbanería has taken action, believing that the only way to contribute to the solution is teaching people that they have the ability to build what is necessary to improve their common space — and to do this, they need more than just money.

Collaboration and coordination is key.

The Learning Curve

Both Urbanería and the spaces it creates are constantly evolving. The materials used from project to project evolve on a trial and error basis. The malleability of these projects are especially visible with the community additions three years following the conception of the park, from painted tires housing a series of plants, to trash bags filled with leaves as safety cushions under a tree.

It’s a space that can even be described as haphazard, with a focus jumping between adding color, water conservation, shade, and more.

But the underlying motivation for the project remains constant: ownership and accountability.

A model of self-management of common space encourages participation, fosters a sense of ownership by users and consequently promotes its care and maintenance.

Urbanería teaches the community to transform their immediate public spaces with simple installation, fast construction and low cost, with the help of experts, volunteers and collective funding.

The primary objective is focused on getting interventions activated and displaying the potential of underused areas, to ultimately have communities realize not only the potential of communal spaces, but launching a long-term process that creates a permanent change in the conception of the city, public spaces and citizenship.

Public Space Becomes Personal

The dynamics of community and public space become more and more apparent as local children occupy the park — one boy enthusiastically jumps to the bench he had help paint.

Another climbs a tree and tells his friend to throw him the rope, trying their best to knot the tire swing back together.

This particular year, Lucia has devoted all her time towards further developing Urbanería, finding new ways to fund projects rather than relying on donations — from selling t-shirts to creating furniture for local clients.

“It’s not that easy — but it’s a lot of fun. People who have a dream have to stay there, be strong when it is not easy because a lot of people stop following their dreams when it becomes difficult. But life will always be difficult, so it might as well be doing something you like.

In the future, I would like Urbanería to be something that other people can create on their own, without us.”

Urbanería seeks to become more than a local initiative — it’s a mentality to evolve public space into the personal.

Written and shot by Aditi Mayer, a sophomore at UC Irvine studying Literary Journalism and International Studies.

You can follow her @aditimayer, and on her blog, ADIMAY.com.