Don’t you dare to make Palma pedestrian all year round? What are they missing?
After a one-week break, Palma reopened to vehicular traffic. The municipal administrators speak of a “positive pedestrianization experience, with a good response from citizens”.
How low are the yardstick for the Asuncion townspeople. They can barely keep the most representative street of the capital walkable for four or five days. It is the most palpable example of the municipal inability to undertake the great transformation that the city cries out for, especially in its historic center whose building heritage could function as a catalyst for such changes as befits a 21st century city.
Why in other latitudes can they do it and we can’t? In Colombia, the city of Medellin was able to convert Comuna 13, once a focus of drug-terrorist violence, into a completely new neighborhood, peaceful and dedicated to musical and theatrical performances, cultural activities, especially painting and sculpture. gastronomy, to the point that today it is a tourist attraction that leaves enormous benefits to its inhabitants.
Something similar happened in Guayaquil, where the overpopulated Santa Ana hill -very similar to the Tacumbú hill- was valued by reforming the houses with a new aesthetic, giving them new water, electricity and sanitary drainage services, installing urban furniture in each public space. and creating a splendid viewpoint on its top. From there starts the Malecón 2,000 that totally transformed its profile on the Guayas River.
Pedestrianizing does not require great science. It is a matter of the municipality and the private and commercial residents agreeing.
You don’t have to look far to see examples that work. Posadas has had its pedestrian Felix de Azara since 2011, part of a restoration project in the historic center of the city. If the Asuncion townspeople decided to go to the Misiones capital to observe its urban development, they should spend a few hours in Encarnación to see how a waterfront is being seriously built, to the shame of those who have the responsibility of maintaining, equipping and administering the already decrepit local waterfront.
Go, explore, take notes and learn, it’s never too late to incorporate knowledge. They have made enough pilgrimage to Curitiba without applying anything they learned in the city of the great urban transformer Jaime Lerner.
