Empty Plots Plan and Hands on Green - Barcelona

The Empty Plots Plan (Urban Slots with Territorial and Social Involvement) is an agreement-based instrument of the Barcelona City Council in Spain. Enacted in 2012, the Plan focuses on the transfer of underused municipal plots to community-led organisations for temporary use (initially for three years). The Plan initially offered two plots in each of the 10 city districts, except in the neighbourhood of Ciutat Vella where only one plot was offered. Most plots are only foreseen to be empty temporally and are either paved or damaged open fields. They are supposed to host new public facilities in the long run, or are affected by municipal planning plans that have not yet entered into force. The community-led initiatives that won the usage rights of the empty plots are from all different fields, such as social, sports, community, and in many cases urban gardens. All initiatives are open to citizen participation. After a second edition in 2015, the Empty Plots Plan was reformulated to a similar program called Mans al Verd - Hands on Green - in 2019 to promote urban green spaces and the implication of citizens to improve and manage urban green spaces within the Pla del Verd i la Biodiversitat 2012-2020 - Green and Biodiversity Plan 2012-2020. Both instruments promote nature-based solutions by giving use to degraded abandoned spaces and creating new ecosystems such as urban gardens, while at the same time responding to the demands of grassroots initiatives to be able to realize their ideas and turn them into projects.

Overview

Type of instrument:

Agreement-based or cooperative instrument›Public-community agreement

Challenges addressed

Ecologic connectivity
Green space management (e.g. accessibility)
Social cohesion
Social equity
Nature appropriation / stewardship

Consideration of nature-based solutions:

In addition to the ecosystem restoration and biodiversity conservation ambitions of the Hands on Green Project, the previous Empty Plots Plan also promoted nature-based solutions by giving use to degraded spaces to grassroots initiatives to develop projects. Some of these were to develop urban gardens and green spaces and therewith create new ecosystems and places to foster social cohesion.

Targeted (peri-)urban areas:

Allotments, community gardens or agricultural areas

Derelict areas

Good practice characteristics:

Effective

Locally appropriate

Potential to be replicated / upscaled

Innovative

Inclusivity

Governance

Government body/bodies

Initiating body:

Barcelona City Council

Instrument design:

Details about how the instrument was designed:

The Barcelona City Council has a track record of promoting community management and use of public spaces, but these experiences were previously disconnected from one another. In 2016, the Directorate for Active Democracy and Decentralization, of the Department of Participation and Territory of the City Council of Barcelona, began the Citizen Assets Program for the territorial development of urban common spaces which aimed to provide an umbrella and a certain homogeneity to these experiences that establish links between the public and the community. The Empty Plots Plan and the Hands on Green Project are two instruments within this broader Citizen Assets Program. The broader Citizen Assets Program is governed by the Citizen Assets Body, which is conceived as a municipal internal body of a collegiate nature that ensures the coordination of the most significant units linked to the transfer of municipal assets to non-profit organizations. The results of the first phase of work of the Citizen Assets Body were reflected in two documents that set the conceptual and legal framework as well as proposals for lines of work that crystallized in the implementation of the Citizen Assets Program for Community Use and Management.

Instrument implementation:

Type of involvement:

Community-based organisations apply to use and manage public plots of the Barcelona City Council. Non-governmental actors thus have the power to decide the daily basis issues regarding the management and use of the plots. The assignment of the plots is intially for three years, with the possibility to be extended. Extensions are decided by the City Council. There is a participatory body composed by social entities and community-based organisations, together with the City Council to provide citizen control, monitoring and democratic governance to the Citizen Assets Program.

Type of non-governmental actors involved:

Citizen oversight (e.g. boards, advisory role)

Co-design of NBS, implemented by government

Implementation of NBS (e.g. with government funds)

Targeted actors:

Citizens or community groups (CBOs), NGOs

Financing

Sources of funding:

Public local authority’s budget

Funds provided by non-governmental organization

Crowd-sourcing

Budget:

50 000€ - 100 000€

Details about instrument financing:

The Barcelona City Council assumed part of the expenditure associated with the tasks of adapting the plots and installing the necessary services for the implementation of the projects. The rest was self-financed by the initiatives managing the plots. In 2012, the first year of the instrument, the initial budget of € 400,000 was allocated to adapt the plots. The municipality continues to finance some of the maintenance expenses of the plots, such as the cost of insurance or electricity. These public expenditures are justified by the recognition of the non-monetary social value generated by the projects. Therefore, a key element is that the Administration does not relinquish its responsibilities.

Monitoring, evaluation and impacts

Is a monitoring framework in place?:

Yes

The Empty Plots Plan and the broader initiatives under the Citizen Assets Program are monitored based on the Communitary Balance (Balanç Comunitari), an evaluation system established together with community-based organisations that allows to measure the impact of the project on the community and does not support a reductionist evaluation based on the logic of market metrics.

Did an evaluation take place?:

Achieved outcomes and impacts:

During the first edition in 2012, the Barcelona City Council offered a total of 19 plots to be managed by non-profit entities for three years. Out of the 14 selected projects - the rest remaining deserted or the project winner withdrew - nine revolved around urban gardening. In 2016, there was a new call that resulted in four new urban gardens as well as a temporary renewal of the existing ones (from 2013). Three more gardens were included in this typology resulting from a bilateral agreement between the municipality and public and private associations. As of December 2016, 16 gardens were part of the Empty Plots Plan. Paradigmatic spaces in the Plan are a community garden called Espais Gardenyes in Sarrià-Sant Gervasi district, and Espai Germanetes which is a socio-cultural project that has an urban garden and also a space for cultural events, and one of the oldest of this kind of experiences in the city. A general outcome is that this instrument values the civic and community use of public spaces instead of their commercial use. Several outcomes of these urban gardens are food production, provision of spaces for leisure, improvement of urban biodiversity, social cohesion and integration, environmental awareness and education and political activity and collective empowerment. Both instruments - the Empty Plots Plan and the Hands on Green Project - have further generated new forms of relationship between the administration and citizens, moving from a more passive position to a more active one, from 'users' to 'citizens'. The transfer of responsibility for the management of spaces to entities has meant breaking the separation between those who design and manage urban spaces and those who use them.

Success factors and lessons learned:

The main success factor - and still an everyday challenge that needs to be continually addressed - is the balance between guaranteeing communal principles of community-based organisations (e.g. autonomy, self-government, rights of use, democratic management) while guaranteeing the public function of most of the resource or services targeted in the Empty Plots Plan and the Citizen Assets Program. This means guaranteeing their accessibility, universality, transparency and public control. Both the Empty Plots Plan and the Hands on Green Project are innovative policy instruments that are integrated within a broader framework - the Citizen Assets Program - that gives coherence, stability, self-management capacity and autonomy to the community-based projects belonging to the policy instruments. Although several experiences exist at the local scale of spaces and resources managed in a participatory way by the community through the transfer of public assets, these experiences often lack a broader framework. The multiple editions of the programme have led to increased community participation over time and through increased self-management, the beneficiaries themselves are capable of creating spaces to suit their ambitions and needs.

Sources and further information

References

List of references:

Baiges C. (2016). El Pla Buits de Barcelona. Ciudad y Territorio Estudios Territoriales (CyTET), 48(188), 307-312. Available at: https://recyt.fecyt.es/index.php/CyTET/article/view/76482

Maestre-Andrés S., Villamayor-Tomas S., Bianchi, I., Calvet-Mir L., Ferreri M., Pera M., Reguero N. (2021). Commons-led coproduction in the Barcelona Metropolitan Area: type of experiences and learning at the territorial level. Final Report. Càtedra Barcelona-UPF de Política Econòmica Local.

Calvet-Mir L., March H. (2019). Crisis and post-crisis urban gardening initiatives from a Southern European perspective: the case of Barcelona. European Urban and Regional Studies 26(1), 97-112.

Castro Coma M. and Forné Aguirre L. 2021. Patrimoni Ciutadà. Un marc per a la col·laboració públic-comunitària. La Hidra Cooperativa

Cruz H., Martínez R. (2016). I si "mentrestant" creem institucions comunitàries? Els buits urbans com a oportunitat en La utilització temporal dels buits urbans. Eds.: Manu Fernández i Judit Gifreu. Col·lecció estudis, Diputació de Barcelona.

Interview(s):

Technician of the Citizen Assets Program (Programa Patrimoni Ciutadà) of the Barcelona City Council

Further documents

Weblinks:

https://ajuntament.barcelona.cat/ecologiaurbana/ca/pla-buits

Photos

@Ajuntament de Barcelona