Spain
Municipality of Medina del Campo
Address: Plaza Mayor de la Hhispanidad 1, Medina del Campo, Spain
Status: NGO / Nonprofit organization
Website: http://www.ayto-medinadelcampo.es/
E-mail: albertolorentesaiz@gmail.com
Tel / Fax: + 34983812481 / + 34982804963
Medina del Campo is a town of pre-Roman origin that enjoys an excellent geographical situation, located in the southwest of the province of Valladolid, whose capital is 45 km. It extends over an area of 104.49 km2, it is located at an altitude of 720 m above sea level and its population nowadays rises to over 20,000 inhabitants.
It is the economic nucleus, next to the capital, more dynamic of the province; its activities include commerce, agriculture and the furniture industry.
The Villa has Post Office, Railway Station and Apeadero for High Speed trains, besides being 65 km from Villanubla Airport.
The geographical situation of Medina del Campo makes it possible for there to be privileged communications, since from here one departs to any place.
The City Council of Medina del Campo began the new millennium with the creation of the Local Development Service and the implementation of sectoral development plans that have marked a path of intense work and
have been the germ necessary for Medina del Campo to participate now in different European projects to continue improving in a balanced and sustainable way social, environmental and economic aspects that contribute to a high quality of life.
Medina del Campo, in this sense, presents itself as a dynamic municipality that during the last years has tried to coordinate structures and development plans of sectorial scope through forums and programs that with more or less success, have introduced new concepts and working ways that make possible today the implementation of a new planning cycle of Medina 21.The Citizen Commission of Medina 21 was born with the spirit of coordinating the activities generated and at the same time promoting the active and direct participation of the citizens of Medina del Campo in this Citizen Commission
Participation in Medina del Campo is considered as a tool:
- Transparent: to overcome the meetings in the offices and bilateral relationships, to move to horizontal relationships fostering a culture based on participatory universalism.
- Pedagogical: the process brings with it a self-learning of both the topics to be treated and the dynamics of participation carried out to vitalize participatory processes.
- Creative: the agenda of issues to be discussed and proposed is not made by the media or politicians, but arises from any citizen group, who wants to be involved.
In this sense, participation in Medina is understood as the process that allows its society to influence and be part of the decision-making on policies concerning it. From the public administrations, and especially from the local level, it implies three important changes: to influence the contents and priorities, to vary the ways in which the public policies are adopted and to change the ways in which the same are implemented.
Under the Premises of sustainabilityand citizen participation Medina 21, structures itself as a development strategy constituting a path shared by citizens and the rest of the public and private entities of the “Tierra de Medina” in the achievement of objectives and concrete projects shared by all. With three sectoral action plans, they bring together 10 priority projects each in the fields of habitability, economic activities and social aspects, and are implemented through technical working teams which meet at least once every two months and create specific working groups when any of the projects so require.
With all the participation forums open directly to citizens, volunteers, technicians and politicians, Medina 21 has already implemented two programming periods (2007-2011 and 2011-2016) and during 2016 addresses the last details of a new programming period 2017-2021 which includes, for the first time, a transversal and integrated line of work called Medina 21 Europe, in which two European cooperation projects are carried out in a participatory way (City Centre Doctor in URBACT III and Rural Growth in INTERREG EUROPE) along with the present Strategy of Sustainable and Integrated Urban Development.
The results to date have been very satisfactory both from a quantitative point of view (more than 70% of the projects considered as strategic have been implemented and a remaining 15% have been initiated) as well as at the qualitative level by introducing a bottom-up working methodology and on the basis of respect and valorisation of our resources in a sustained, respected and unanimously supported by public administrations and the City Council itself manner.