Integral Urban Development: Methodological Guidelines for the Design of Public Policies in Neighborhoods

Abstract

The Integral Urban Development has been defined in institutional and academic sectors, in recent years, as a new approach to tackle actions for socio-economic improving of the cities. This new development model has direct implications for the design and implementation of urban public policies, as is characterized by a relational style in decision making, in which cooperation and public participation are key. A new way to boost public actions where the social, economic, cultural and environmental aspects should be linked together and that have to be translated into a balanced development of neighborhoods and the areas that form the cities, and that requires new original methods and organizational designs that enable the government to assume the new style and approaches the new activities, for the Integral Urban Development model to materialize into public policies are needed technical tools that make it possible. The aim of this paper is to describe the methodological tool used to decide, through a public participation process, the location of municipal cultural centers in a medium size city in Andalusia (Lucena, Cordoba) that projects such structures as essential for the balanced development of neighborhoods in their physical, social, economic and cultural aspects.