Madrid Central: Without green life flourishes
“Two weeks ago, my wife and I where strolling around Madrid Central. Waiting to cross the street at an intersection with lights, she argued: “If what we look for is improving the mobility of pedestrians, we should suppress the green light for vehicles and pedestrians should be able to cross a street at any time.” This powerful idea gave way to the ‘Madrid Central: Sin verde la vida florece’ (‘Madrid Central: Without green, life flourishes‘) workshop (MCW).
Stakeholders & Beneficiaries
Co-creation process
- new forms of collaboration and co-participation;
- new methodologies, tools and protocols to reduce the distance between public institutions and people;
- new forms to optimise resources thanks to the exchange of information between the municipal departments themselves and social, civic, and educational entities.
Digital Transformation Process
Results, Outcomes & Impacts
- Open research group about experimentation in public administration, to build case studies. Based on successful experiences in other regions and countries, participants in this line reflect on what tools and strategies are useful to develop public intelligence and innovation (under public values and placing social justice and equity as referents).
- Motioning around the city is a series of workshops open for the collaboration between public servants and citizens to develop initiatives around moving and motioning in Madrid.
- Working group to support municipal transformation. This is a space for a learning and practice community set up with HR managers from the municipality to identify key changes and intra-innovation areas within the municipal organisation.
Challenges & Bottlenecks
For citizens, barriers were:
- Fear of being used (do a volunteer or unpaid work for people who are paid, the public servants).
- Frustration of earlier projects or initiatives that did not prosper (fear of losing time): “The idea of coming to work for free for the City Council is present. And then I’m not even going to be the one to take it forward.” Or another workshop that does not move forward.
- “it is difficult to manage the expectations and wishes of those who come to participate: Everyone wants the official’s phone number.”
For public officials, barriers were:
- To find incentives (define when to do it, where and the extra services they demanded like children playroom or snacks).
- The fear and vulnerability they feel when facing neighbours asking them for explanations.
- To engage different public servants than those aware or related to the initiatives.
- Officials who participated did so more as consultants than as true participants.
Overall barriers:
- The workshop demanded an enormous effort of animation and diffusion. For promoters it is not easy to invest that much energy without success or some reward..
- Expectations and wishes of those who come to participate are difficult to handle: From those who aspired to come with a solution and its implementation to those who were satisfied with generating a favourable climate on the subject.
- Participants tend to think beyond the prototype and want to achieve results: “achieve more than a bunch of good intentions and reach future commitments”.
Transferability & Replicability
- Produce social innovation and prototype solutions for wicked social problems of any sort
- Arrive to those solutions putting together individuals that do not know each other, but who after the process have discovered the power of networking, agreement and co-creation. In this context, each new community of agents built this way – i.e., the PSINSI itself – is an innovative product itself
- To explore new forms of collaboration and co-participation in public affairs that contribute to the generation of more democratic, inclusive and diverse citizen services.
- To test methodologies, tools and protocols that help reduce the distance between public institutions and people.
- To detect opportunities to optimise resources thanks to the exchange of information between the municipal administration and social, civic, educational entities, etc.
Success Factors
- Most collaborators and all proponents had participated in similar activities and, in some cases, have years of experience in participatory processes.
- They valued the importance of this workshop as a space to share ideas, generate empathy and open the mind.
- The experience has helped them to clarify their original idea of the project and focus their energies on the most important aspects.