GIRONA’S SHORE. THE FRAMEWORK PROJECT

GIRONA’S SHORE is a collection of self-initiated network of projects and initiatives that aim to reclaim, develop and manage Girona’s neglected green peri-urban spaces and convert them to a multifunctional green infrastructure. It reimagines a green-open conurbation, an extended city, where nature is a strategic asset accessible to everyone. To turn this ambition into reality, a low-cost and replicable process with various design tools has been developed over time.

A framework project, building on various citizen’s walkshops, serves as a road map to outline the future of Girona’s multifunctional green infrastructure and consists of 13 loops, 30 naturban parks and numerous small actions to facilitate its gradual implementation, eventually growing to 600 hectares – Girona’s largest public facility. It maps out a spatial strategy, but also embeds temporal tactics and upscales the local know-how gained from the pilot projects.

The construction of a new narrative for the city is another component of the vision. We developed a set of posters: 12 ways of looking at the shore - as a health resource, pole of bio-landscape diversity, risk-management , neighbour and leisure network, cultural stage, management-laboratory, ultimately as provider of eco-systemic services - to assist with the communication and dissemination of the project to the wider community and to get funding.

Altogether the combination of projects, strategies and actions that form the design method and create a malleable and frugal tool kit facilitates a responsive upgrading through successive acting. The various ingredients of this “cocktail” complement and relate to each other and, in reversed order to conventional master planning, together bring about a new shared vision of the town.

Health and environmental benefits

The availability of appropriable and accessible natural spaces has been known to contribute to the general health and wellbeing according to the WHO and has turned into an urgency during the current COVID-19 crisis. Since the start of the pandemic, Girona’s citizens have been restricted to move within a 1km radius from their home and have appropriated the newly created network of accessible green spaces at their doorstep.

The large-scale dimension of open space networks is fundamental also to ecological aspects and climate change adaptation, and improves connectivity, mobility and the availability of leisure spaces for running, cycling, skating.

Furthermore, the project’s uniqueness manifests itself through its capacity to collect, create and share landscape design knowledge among the city’s landscape “brigades” as disseminating agents.