Uploaded on 2016-05-02 by mgomez_rojo

As citizens of a specific area, we are sometime more aware of the reality of our close environment than local authorities, which usually implement a project according to availability of budgets or political needs (we are all well aware of the appearance of projects just before elections or during changes in the political scene in a city , region or country). Nevertheless, sometimes we feel powerless as citizens to start up projects which we consider would have a positive effect on our neighborhood or local community, and wait for the authorities to realize the potential of a space or address specific needs of a place. In opposition to this, it is time to feel empowered as citizens to take a more active role in designing our cities, and taking advantage of the benefits of bottom up initiatives. Lets take, for example, a reality in the city of Madrid, which would be the availability of plenty of empty rooftops. Once used for drying clothes and enjoying the fresh nights during the warm summer months, most of them are now unused. The first need is an awareness of community and empowerment. This is usually reached through the establishment of neighborhood associations or neighborhood community movements. Linking individual citizens and making them feel they are part of a community which may share common goals is now more easily achieved through social networking and information technology. Setting up a platform for specific neighborhood in the city would be the first step. As a second stage, each community would help locate empty rooftops in buildings which are property of the community, such as those in buildings in which neighbors are owners, not tenants, or other buildings part of the social infrastructure of the neighborhood (schools, day-care centers, etc). The fact that they are not a property of a private corporation, but owned by neighbors/citizens or organisations of a public nature would enable these spaces to become useful to the community without becoming subject to the interests of the market. As a third step, workshops could be set up to come up with ideas for these spaces, focusing on sustainability and ecology initiatives, such as urban farming or energy production. In a fourth stage, contacting with experts willing to volunteer their time to make this projects come true would avoid the implementation of initiatives with a long-term negative effect on both the community and the environment. This idea is inspired by projects such as the well known Plaza de la Cebada in Madrid, an empty plot owned by the city authorities which after years without any use was taken by the community as a space in which they could provide themselves with the activities and facilities which the decision-makers in the city were being too slow to accomplish. ![campo de la cebada][1] [1]: https://edxuploads.s3.amazonaws.com/14622084672304557.jpg