Parque Explora holds under loan-for-use a green space next to the future Buen Comienzo Library, in Medellín's Moravia neighborhood. The area, historically underused, hosts a small community garden and borders a recently enabled but unequipped stretch of public space. The neighborhood and its surroundings — Aranjuez, Sevilla, Miranda — suffer a severe shortage of quality public space.
The project seeks to give new meaning to that urban landscape together with the community, transforming it into an active ecosystem with expanded gardens, a play area for children and an ecological network in dialogue with the future children's library. The design is grounded in four values agreed with the project's stakeholders: participation and ownership, universal accessibility, coexistence and safety, and ecological regeneration.
La Otra Ciudad contributed on two fronts: the technical design of the space and the coordination of the participatory process. The methodology contemplates three moments: a community diagnosis with multiple audiences — children, expectant mothers, street vendors, older adults, community leaders and everyday citizens —, an internal design filter, and a community feedback round before construction, guaranteeing that the community co-authors the result.
The project is developed in alliance with Parque Explora, Medellín's Secretariat of Citizen Culture, the Buen Comienzo program and the organization Medellín Conversa, which contributed citizen-conversation instruments to humanize the territorial diagnosis process.