Urban participation as a tool all over the world: a method throughout Spain and Argentina

Contemporary cities are complex systems in which society, economy and environment interact. As an organism the city respond to the unstable condition of its components and its process of ‘metropolisation’ is becoming unhealthy and unsustainable. Citizens are not anymore identifying them self with the urban and natural spaces they live in. Such a process has disrupted the city as a place of living, segmenting it into fences, restricting the collective life, further compromising the environmental balance, without suitable places to encourage the inclusion of citizens within their own city, moving towards an individual society, devoid of cultural identities and collective memories, towards a social implosion in the private space that discredits the urban public spaces. The paper aims to explore how urban planning and architecture can contribute to promote public health and well-being throughout the improvement of public and cultural urban spaces. According to the 17 Sustainable Development Goals 2015-2030, the paper aims to define a method of urban participation through two different experiences, on one hand will be reported a research about the re-thinking of the ring of Barcelona, a European city, which crosses different places and identities but it links them by the common image of the infrastructure; on the other hand the case of an informal settlement in Buenos Aires, a south American city, a linear street in which different cultures live creating a new common identity. Two opposite cases, faced up with the same methodology: citizens have been called to intervene with their needs. The aim of the paper is to highlight the differences and similarities emerging from the application of the same methodology in opposite conditions, towards the definition of common societal urgencies and local differences, for the transposition of adequate interventions in urban and design planning to create inclusive and healthy livable cities.