La Rinconada Celebrates the 1st Sustainable Development Conference to Shape the Municipality's Future

This initiative, which is part of the 2030 Urban Agenda, began several years ago with an agreement between La Rinconada City Council and Pablo de Olavide University (or UPO, as per its Spanish acronym). This event was also joined by the Spanish Network for Sustainable Development, with its director, Marta Ares, as a special guest.

The La Rinconada City Council and Pablo de Olavide University have been working closely together for some time to launch the La Rinconada Urban Observatory. This project, led by Rafael Merinero, a professor from the Department of Sociology, has helped the municipality be selected as a Spanish Local Urban Agenda Action Plan pilot project by the Ministry of Transport, Mobility and Urban Agenda.

In Merinero's words, “establishing links between a municipality and our university is a great opportunity, because it is a fundamental pillar for the implementation of the knowledge we work on. Contributing to achieving Sustainable Development Goals is a great window of opportunity for our university.”

Originally, the collaboration's main objective was to develop the La Rinconada Urban Observatory Activity Plan as a tool to generate and transfer knowledge about the municipality's transformation process.

This project was intended to be a useful tool for diagnosis and decision-making. Public universities, including the UNED and the University of Seville, have also acted as participatory agents in the territorial, economic, social, and environmental roundtables for the design of the new Urban Strategy or Integrated Action Plan for La Rinconada.

Additionally, the Provincial Forum for Urban Agendas and Action Plans, aligned with the Spanish 2030 Agenda, has held las fall.

Now, La Rinconada has celebrated the 1^st LR30 Sustainable Development Conference. The event has featured important figures of the City Council, such as Mayor Javier Fernández and Deputy Mayor Raquel Vega, as well as Professor Rafael Merinero, from Pablo de Olavide University, and a special guest: Marta Ares, director of the Spanish Network for Sustainable Development. The event was held at the Los Silos Civic Center, near the City Hall.

de su directora, Marta Ares.

The Mayor thanked both Pablo de Olavide University and the Spanish Network for Sustainable Development for their attendance, as their work has been instrumental in creating “a tool designed to observe, measure, evaluate, and guide the municipality’s urban transformation process based on knowledge, evidence, and participation, which has already led to the development of the first 2023 Urban Transformation Report, the mapping of vulnerable areas, and the generation of 72 indicators aligned with the Spanish Urban Agenda.”

Raquel Vega also wanted to highlight UPO’s role as “La Rinconada’s travel companion since the beginning of this project.” In her speech, she emphasized that “we want urban sustainability to be not just a goal, but a real process. We need solid reference frameworks, reliable indicators, and a community that supports us. Thanks to the presence of REDS (Spanish Network for Sustainable Development), a national network that connects public institutions, universities, and social actors to help ensure the 2030 Agenda is implemented in a real and effective way in our territories, we feel that support, because if we want urban sustainability to be not just a goal, but a real process, we need solid reference frameworks, reliable indicators, and a community that supports us. REDS allows us to be part of that community.”

Vega also underlined that “we focus on all sectors of activity given the nature of the municipality: potatoes and airplanes, agriculture and the aerospace industry, without forgetting new deposits, commerce and hospitality, construction, and the potential that innovation offers through our vocation to consolidate ourselves as a Smart City." Plus, she took the opportunity to promote La Rinconada's candidacy as a UNESCO Creative City “for its work in culture, as a driver force of change and transformation, as well as in the economic, social, and environmental spheres... We hope that this candidacy materializes into what we want to become.”

Finally, the director of REDS, Marta Ares, stated that “at the Spanish Network for Sustainable Development, we were already aware of the good work that La Rinconada has been doing, as it has been a benchmark for sustainable development for many years. It is a pleasure to be here and experience he spectacular work they are doing firsthand, so we can only congratulate La Rinconada, its Mayor, and its Deputy Mayor.”

In addition to this line of collaboration, the City Council and the University share a third one, linked to the Observatory, which focuses on a more exhaustive analysis of productive sectors within the framework of the City for Investment strategy. The University has a multidisciplinary team of experts that complements the City Council's teams and collaborates with other economic and social organizations.