Barcelona Digital City

The pilot test of HaBITants, an educational programme that helps children and young people to discover, use and live responsibly in their urban environment, finished on 14 June, with a closing ceremony to raise awareness of the programme’s pilot tests, carried out by students from two Barcelona schools.

Fifth-year primary school students from the Escola Fluvià and 4th year secondary school (ESO) students from the Institut Quatre Cantons came to the Ca l’Alier, the BIT Habitat Foundation’s headquarters, to present the projects they had been carrying out under the programme.   

Here are a few of the pilot tests that were carried out:

• Improving the neighbourhood’s empty spaces and parks:
  • Improving the empty space next to the Escola Sant Martí with the installation of a small football pitch, ping-pong tables and benches.
  • Improving the space between Carrer antic de València and Carrer de Lope de Vega with a sports facility, improving the green space and so on.
  • Improving the Parc del Poblenou: trees, resting spaces, fountains and so on.
  • Improving Plaça dels Sufragistes: more play elements.
  • Improving Diagonal MAR's slides.
• Inclusive traffic lights in Diagonal.
• Green bus shelters: bus shelters with plants on top.
• Waste bins with recycling compartments in the city’s parks and waste bins with lids.
• Maintaining the La Escocesa creation factory.
• Solar street lamps.

HaBITants

There are many ways of experiencing, residing in, using and changing the city. These result directly from a series of factors such as gender, cultural origin, capacity and age and from the privileges and oppression derived from them.

HaBITants was created to provide training and skills to teachers so they can accompany students on a experiential-learning journey, which is meant to enable them to develop as critical, independent and active players in their local area, so it can become an inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable place.

Each of us, depending on how we use the city, generates specific knowledge of it. That knowledge comes from our personal experience of the city and needs to be regarded as valid and valuable knowledge.

The HaBITants programme addresses children and young people as interlocutors for identifying and expressing problems and needs in the areas they live in and encourages them to put together proposals for improving their local environment.

Given the successful conclusion of the pilot test, the educational programme has been included in the unified call for applications for educational programmes for the 2021-2022 school year. Three schools have registered to take part in HaBITants for the coming school year:

• Escola Mas Casanovas
• Escola Fluvià
• Institut La Sagrera Sant Andreu