“Children and young people imagine Diagonal Avenue”

The web participatory i.de.a. Diagonal that we commenting announces an exhibition that opened the last 21th in Sala Ciutat on the participatory process that has been done in 23 schools in the city, for your students think about how they would like to outside the avenue remodelled, under the name “Infants i joves imaginem la Diagonal” (Children and young people imagine the Diagonal).

The exhibition, limited, almost minimalist in my view, but whose visit recommend (a quarter of an hour is sufficient), because some curiosity can be found, shown in some murals the main ideas that children and young people transmitted on the new avenue, to pass, then to an area where they can be observed in more detail the proposals, composed, if I remember evil, by 96 cards where participants have pasted figures representing the uses that they would like to be given to the track on a plane for a couple of streets of the Diagonal Avenue. A video without sound of less than five minutes tries to explain how developed the meetings in schools.

Of course, with a proper use of the possibilities of the Internet, it would not be necessary to them outside explaining all this: it would be reproduced in the official web site of the participatory process. Furthermore from the brief that i have linked, in another, i.de.a. Diagonal summarizes the meeting that the Major of Barcelona City Council had with some of the participants in a municipal hall: nothing more. Even in the news section of the municipal general web site there are more information on the web participatory: a vídeo presents the act of students with the Major and a dossier of press provides the main ideas common exposed by the students. These documents might also be accessible from i.de.a. Diagonal, as it could be the 96 cardboards resulting from the debates and the murals of exposure. A tool very didactics, but more difficult to show by issues of right to self-image, and more in the case of minors, would be expose videos with the discussions that took place in the classroom where it is really all we could hear the views of those who, as the Major says in his meeting with the authors, will be the future users of the new Diagonal Avenue you want to press ahead.

Plataforma Diagonal per a Tothom (Platform Diagonal to Everyone)

I have already in the past the lack of interactivity that presents the web i.de.a. Diagonal. Today is a space information that collects history, pictures and videos, but there is no possibility of deliberation, or on its past, present or future, despite the potential Internet. In line, ultimately, with the majority of web institutional: information without the possibility debate.

Again the particular initiative has been shown dynamics to publicize, in this case, their proposals. If I spoke to the Forum of Catalan Transport link, you find in paragraph Discussions on the Net, as an area of exchange of views, today I presented two concrete proposals on a possible new Diagonal Avenue made by Plataforma Diagonal per a Tothom (Platform Diagonal to Everyone), one both the platform, composed of various associations, such as, in relation to the use of the bicycle, one of its components, Bicicleta Club de Catalunya (Catalonia Bicycle Club). In addition, can be found the interview that today publishes the digital edition of the newspaper La Vanguardia with the spokesman for the platform.

Why you cannot obtain this information on the web participatory official i.de.a. Diagonal? There is a long time for consultation of the month of April and the citizens could analyze with time concrete proposals.

Lack of link between Blog Barcelona and web i.de.a. Diagonal

We have already made reference to the lack of possibilities of interrelationship between the people interested in exchange views on the reform of Diagonal Avenue to be reflected in the official web site of the participatory process, i.de.a. Diagonal.

But what has been the surprise (or not) to check that the Blog Barcelona, official blog journal of the city of Barcelona, contained various inputs on the reform of Diagonal Avenue. It would not be good, taking advantage of the possibilities of ICT, at least linking on the web i.de.a. Diagonal the opinions in the Blog Barcelona concerning the reform of Diagonal Avenue?

If you allow me, I will do so in this space. You will see that in the right column of this blog, as “Blog Barcelona”, appear two links, one that leads to the home of the blog, but that does not show directly the entries referred to the reform of Diagonal Avenue, and another that leads to a new blog that I created under the title “The reform of the Diagonal Avenue in the Blog Barcelona ” and that links in each entry with one of the contributions on the reform of the Diagonal have done the Blog Barcelona. These entries I located through the search of the Blog Barcelona. I will go upgrading for which do not have to do so much work, because in the cloud of labels of the Blog Barcelona nor do we have the “reform of Diagonal” to choose.

New resource: unblogenred.es

I found the blog of red.es, an agency of Ministry Industry, Tourism and Trade responsible for the information society. A part of the topic at hand, in unblogenred.es you can find information and views on various topics related to information society. The entrance to the Diagonal on the participatory process is not generating much debate at the moment.

New resource: Fòrum del Transport Català

In a previous post referred to the lack of interaction with and among citizens that they are currently lacking in the official website of the participatory process i.de.a. Diagonal. The truth is that GoogleAlert, which helps me locate information on the Web on the subject at hand is not very prolific show satisfactory results. But apart from some timely contributions to virtual comunities deserves special attention because of the systematic contributions to the theme of his staff, the Forum del Transport Català that I linked in a new section “Discussions on the Net.” Represents what is missing in the official website: a real discussion between those who want to collaborate on what should be, should not, may or may not be Diagonal Avenue. This is the true potential of electronic participation: creating a place of ideas, but public, open to all, not restricted to the official organizer of the participatory process, as in the newsletter not visible to other participants in the process that will analyze .

i.de.a. Diagonal (2) – Lack of networking

One of the main features of the Internet, especially since the so-called Web 2.0, is the possibility of networking among its users, whether through blogs, discussion forums, instant messaging and other tools.

We must therefore, if an electronic citizen participation process, based largely on a website created specifically for that purpose, should not a place to collect feedback from citizens, beyond “The citizen question” , which contains five questions and answers raised by passers and asked by municipal technicians. This section also remains static for more than four months, namely March 16, when it published the first place: the same five people, with the same question, same answer. And is not that people do not write, who can not.

There is more freedom to participate in the group ”Upload your photos of the Diagonal“, where it can be accessed from the Flickr implementation, but it is only a photographic exhibition.

I.de.a Diagonal (1) – Presentation. Failure to use of audio-visual tools.

This entry we begin analyzing the web and its possibilities and shortcomings as a tool for participation.

The page presentation consists of four parts: a header and three columns. The header includes links to the four major sections of the site, which will consider in future entries: “The participatory process,” “All you need to know the Diagonal,” “Why we created the new Diagonal” and “What is i. de.a. Diagonal.

The content of this page is an entry in the web, so we will not elaborate on its structure. In short, the left column gives access to participatory tools, the center collects the main stories on the process (or, more often, reminders about the content of the web) and on the left gives access to pages special interest information on the web.

To date, this column offers a 57 seconds video with images of the Diagonal, which, playing with the speed of the camera seems to have claimed the transition to a daily marathon of tranquility almost relaxing: the call, vocabulary in current, urban pacification.

The link in the middle of the third column is a lost opportunity to exploit the potential of new technologies in the dissemination of knowledge. Under the title “You missed the training sessions?” … “Download here all material you access to three documents in PDF format offering the images that accompanied the presentations by the various speakers at the briefing that took place during March and April, which have already been discussed in a previous entry. The sessions are organized in four papers and end of each one opened a question and answer session. Given that the technological capabilities of the Barcelona City Council allows the live broadcasting the plenary sessions of the Municipal Council at its website, as well as viewing deferred, it is difficult to understand how “all material” of the training sessions is limited to chips, sometimes only with images without comment, which accompanied the exhibition of the speakers. For a person not initiated in the analysis of urban design, mobility and trade in the area of the Diagonal is not easy to reconstitute the discourse of the speakers, or to draw conclusions from its visual presentation, beyond curious to get some data on these issues. Would not have been more informative to allow access to a full audiovisual recording sessions?
The last section of the third column links to a Web page on the public art that can be found on the Diagonal, which will consider in due course.

The left column, for participatory tools offers direct access to the questionnaire of participation, which will discuss extensively below, and a photographic collection on the Diagonal in which readers can enter their photos via the Flickr application of Yahoo.