Virtual simulations are always attractive and liked; just a few months before the elections. This Thursday the mayor of Valencia, Joan Ribó, and the deputy mayor and councilor for Urban Development, Sandra Gómez, have presented a few that allow us to glimpse how the Parc de la Desembocadura could become in the future to connect the Túria garden with the sea.
Ribó and Gómez have announced the winning project of this emblematic performance that both have agreed to describe as “historic” and that comes to settle a “debt” with the Natzaret and the Grau neighborhoods. The winning project (Con)fluir, chosen unanimously by the 12 members of the jury, aims to renaturalize the space as well as repair it from an ecological, urban and social point of view, explained the mayor. It is an area with a surface area of ??245,600 square metres, between the L’Assut de l’Or bridge and Natzaret.
Thus, the initiative proposes an urban forest in the style of the one that exists in the Rambleta park, spaces for citizen use, as well as a large-scale playground that will recreate Gulliver’s shipwreck where they want to install a giant ship that gives continuity to a story in the river garden. The ship would be a few meters from the sea and a few kilometers beyond Gulliver’s body where children and not so children play, climb and balance.
In order to know the details of the project, Gómez pointed out, we will have to wait for the final wording of the project, which is expected to be approved in just over a year. Of course, both the mayor and the deputy mayor promised to speed up the deadlines as much as possible given the importance of a work that in its first phase has a budget of 16.7 million euros (close to 35 million is the overall performance). .
It also became clear that the connection to the sea is not included in this project: “it reaches the border”, Ribó stressed.
In the absence of materializing in the project, it is not clear what use can be made of that sheet of water that has been designed to emulate the old Natzaret beach. Ribó and Gómez have once again agreed that it will not be an area suitable for swimming, but it has not been ruled out that the area could be navigable as is already the case in the lake of the City of Arts and Sciences or in the Cabecera Park.
“The park will dignify Natzaret and El Grau, two neighborhoods that have been hit hard by industrial development and infrastructures that have turned their backs on the public”, Ribó stated. “The idea is clear”, he remarked, “greener and more water as opposed to cement infrastructures”, in a clear criticism of the project presented by the PP for the same area.
For his part, Gómez has emphasized that the objective of the project “is to unite the east and the west, and the north and the south, placing Natzaret in the center, a neighborhood that historically has been on the outskirts of the city, in a an area completely absorbed by the impact of the port infrastructure, literally divided and separated in terms of mobility and connection with Valencia”. The deputy mayor has also valued the renaturation of the area and has highlighted that they have taken into account the suggestions from the neighbours, such as the proposal for Gulliver’s boat made by the students of the Natzaret school.
Renaturation, they highlighted in a joint press conference, should serve to create a natural barrier that reduces the acoustic and visual impact generated by the port area. The collaboration of the Port has been highlighted by the mayor himself, who recalled that the Port Authority will provide 75% of the cost of the first phase.
