Naus de Ribes - the initiative

Some months ago I joined the collective Naus de Ribes, which defends the necessity of making public facilities in the former and unused railway warehouses. The vibe in the group is really stimulating to go on working on a real project with all the possibilities still open.

In January 2016 an  open call for collaborators was made as the original group was too small to develop further the work to defend the project to the City Council. I was aware that something was moving in Russafa, but I was curious to know what it was about, especially when having more free time due to work change.





The citizens´ initiative related to the Naus de Ribes (Ribes´ warehouses) has been doing its way for the last 2-3 years, firstly as a project initiated many years ago through Plataforma per Russafa. In January it got dissociated from it with the purpose to gain more neighbours´ support and involve them in the process that already was happening.

The great change for the collective occured with the political change in the Municpal elections in May 2015. The parties in opposition then, considered the strategy of the neighbours´initiative as coherent to their political ideology and supported it. Now, when some of them are governing, the Municipality is arranging regular meetings to hear the needs of the district in order to decide the future of the big warehouses. Really a big success, as the relationship between people and their governers is evolving in such a way, having in mind that the same party was governing in Valencia for the last 24 years.

Currently the works of the Central Park of Valencia are going on and the warehouses are on its territorry, it is getting urgent to decide the uses of all these spaces in order to not double-do works. But the uses must correspond to the real existing needs of the neighbourhood, as it generally lacks public facilties. In 2014 - 2015 a series of analisys of the shortcomings was made by professional teams together with the neighbours, the problems are listed as follows:

• poor public sports offer
• too many private spaces offering cultural events  
• a big share of elderly population

So, these were intended to be solved by choosing the proper uses for the warehouse, namely sports facilities, cultural facilities and day center for elederly people. In other words SPORT - CULTURE - HEALT AND CARE, as they are deeply related and connected. An elderly person that is doing sport is also taking care of themself and rising their quality of life.

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