The City Council takes the first steps towards the development of the Benidorm Urban Agenda

Benidorm City Council has contracted technical assistance for the preparation of the Benidorm Urban Agenda, a document that aims to design a city strategy to transform its urban area following the Spanish Urban Agenda, initiating a process of strategic reflection to “define a long-term municipal model to achieve a more sustainable, fair and intelligent city by 2030”. This was conveyed by the Councillor for Innovation, European Funds and Contracting of the Benidorm City Council, Aida García Mayor, who pointed out that the contract has been awarded to the company Eurovértice Consultores, S.L., for a price of 33,489.97 euros and a term of execution of six months.

The councillor explained that, as stated in the technical specifications, the process of preparing the Benidorm Urban Agenda will include different phases. In the first phase, Phase 1 or Diagnosis, the successful bidder must draw up a diagnosis of the current situation of the municipality within the framework of the strategic and specific objectives of the Spanish Urban Agenda, the European Urban Agenda and the New Urban Agenda of UN-HABITAT and the Local Action Plan of the Urban Agenda of Benidorm for the next 20 years. Phase 2 or Definition of actions, is the period during which a work plan will be drawn up with specific proposals for improvement for the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) in the municipality and whose development will form the local Urban Agenda.

In phase 3 or Drafting, the Action Plan of the Urban Agenda of Benidorm will be drafted, incorporating proposals that have a pilot character and can serve other municipalities, developing principles and objectives such as human development and social cohesion, equality between men and women and non-discrimination, sustainable development, technology, accessibility, demographic change, mitigation and adaptation to climate change, circular economy, innovation, transparency and accountability and participation. This document must contain at least a detailed study of the strategic and specific objectives that make up the plan; a file of each plan, program or project to be developed and the proposal of the possible training and advice activities for municipal staff necessary to implement the proposed actions, which will be coordinated by the Municipal Engineering Department, with the support of the Innovation and Public Space, Works, Universal Accessibility and Mobility departments. With all this, phases 4 and 5 will be to implement a communication plan and evaluation, assessment and monitoring of the actions developed in previous phases to know the degree of implementation of the Action Plan, Aida García Mayor has specified.

Finally, the councillor has highlighted that the preparation of this Urban Agenda of Benidorm “is within the actions planned in SDG number 11, to ensure that cities and urban settlements are inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable”. Likewise, she has pointed out that this technical assistance will allow “to reinforce with effective technical assistance the municipal structure to manage and implement this Urban Agenda” as well as “to strengthen a shared vision of the future and establish the criteria that will guide the development of the municipality and the projects that can act as drivers of transformation in the time horizon of the next 20 years”.