Coexistence Committees

Challenge

Barcelona Provincial Council has begun to work on municipal problems related to coexistence. Thus, the creation of Coexistence Committees was proposed as a transversal space to align the interventions of the different professional figures working in the public space. The public space is understood as a place where citizens relate to each other, which is currently being over-regulated: for this reason, through the Coexistence Committees, Barcelona Provincial Council wishes to promote a participative and community-based work proposal, aimed at mediation and conflict resolution to intervene in coexistence problems.

Response

Since 2020, Spora has been methodologically designing and dynamising the work sessions of the Coexistence Committees in municipalities in the province of Barcelona. In order to accompany the Committees Spora proposes a participatory methodological approach, generating in each of the municipalities a heterogeneous technical space for participation and work, which facilitates collaborative work between figures from different areas, for the analysis and formulation of responses to situations that affect citizen coexistence. Likewise, Spora:

• has designed and dynamized working sessions of the Working Space for technical managers of the Coexistence Committees: this space has the objective of creating a space for analysis of the functioning of the roundtables, detecting difficulties, limits and potential, developing strategies for improvement, as well as reinforcing the figure of the technical manager of the roundtable;
• has designed and given training sessions on the roundtables with municipal technical staff.

Picture: Jilbert Ebrahimi