WELTSTADT

© Campo de la Cebada

Written by Javier Duero, co-curator We-Traders Madrid

The City of Madrid presently offers a highly stimulating challenge to its inhabitants. It is experiencing a time of deep economic and identity crisis, thus a unique opportunity in which to reflect on their future with community leaders, specialists in architecture and urbanism, with creative groups and citizens’ initiatives with horizontal structures.

Madrid is a creative incubator in which institutional and private, individual and collective initiatives have worked for years on a new vision of urban life and the introduction of changes designed to make the city more liveable, with a more sustainable management and greater public spirit. This set of cultural and social agents constitute a very vulnerable ecosystem, which, however, creates high added value in social innovation. All are responsible for protecting their work as an essential city heritage.

These processes involve active agents such as the public “laboratories” for social innovation and citizen participation Medialab-Prado and Intermediae, the departments of culture, solidarity, environment and education of the Casa Encendida, outreach and citizen encounter programmes such as Piensa Madrid, networking platforms like Zoohaus and Arquitecturas Colectivas, initiatives like Hackitectura, Ecomovilidad and BiciCrítica, organizations like Observatorio Metropolitano, projects such as Fresh Madrid, Kulturometer and Mapear Madrid, young architects like Andrés Jaque, Uriel Fogué, María Langarita and Víctor Navarro, collectives such as Zuloark and Basurama, cultural associations and visual artists, etc..

Several initiatives of this network are involved in the project We-Traders. The Madrid We-Trades are Campo de Cebada, Todo por La Praxis, Teamlabs, Walkinn Coop, ELII / Gabinete de Crisis de Ficciones Políticas and Vivero de Iniciativas Ciudadanas, all of them stakeholders that respond to crisis by proposing new urban models using social, economic and ecological resources. In February 2014 they will present a set of proposals intended to contribute to the process of collective action and citizen participation at Matadero Madrid. All of this will occur shortly after learning of the decision taken on Madrid’s bid to host the Olympic Games. Regardless of the outcome, they will think about what the city we live in will be like in the year 2020, this being the task and responsibility of us all.