Neighbourhood identity, the key to tackling unwanted loneliness?

Zumarraga Town Council leads a process of community participation to revitalise the upper neighbourhoods of the town

ALC has accompanied Zumarraga Town Council throughout the year 2024, generating a community and participatory process focused on the challenges affecting the neighbourhoods located in the upper part of the municipality. The Town Council's diagnosis indicated that, as a result of the COVID and its consequences, life in the neighbourhoods had declined worryingly, especially with regard to the elderly. The Mendizábal Industrial Estate, located in the upper area, is separated from the rest of the municipality by the GI-2632 road. This road crosses Zumarraga and acts as a barrier between the upper and lower areas of the town. Although improvements have been made to the road to mitigate this effect, people living in the upper area, especially the elderly, still find it difficult to access the resources of the municipality.

In recent years, Zumarraga Town Council has worked to promote active ageing and tackle unwanted loneliness through programmes such as ELKARZAINDUZ or Tau-Taupadak. However, neighbourhood harmony, unwanted loneliness and the lack of community involvement in the neighbourhoods of the upper area continued to be a concern. Therefore, the City Council decided to activate a new process with a focus on social innovation and adaptive governance, in collaboration with ALC, to complement existing efforts. Within this framework, ALC and Zumarraga City Council, led by the social services and equality area, designed a participatory process that included a listening phase in the neighbourhoods and co-creation to develop new projects.

Challenges identified during the listening process

The listening process confirmed some of the perceptions held by the City Council: a significant part of the elderly population suffers situations of unwanted loneliness. In addition, the need to create new spaces for dialogue about the loss of loved ones was identified. One of the narratives most often repeated by people in the neighbourhood was the large number of deaths that have occurred in recent years (not only due to COVID). As one participant noted: ‘In a short time, many people have died in the square’. These losses have created new family realities, and unwanted loneliness is perceived as one of the biggest challenges in the area: "Last Wednesday we were in gymnastics. Out of 18 of us, there were nine of us, and it just so happened that all nine were widows. I saw that they needed to talk". Another important narrative that emerged during the process is related to neighbourhood identity. The upper neighbourhoods of Zumarraga were built in the second half of the 20th century, during the industrialisation of the municipality, thanks to migration, mainly from Spanish provinces. Many people interviewed recalled the old neighbourhood festivals, which used to be even more relevant than Zumarraga's main festivals, reflecting the active life of that time. Today, however, these celebrations have disappeared, and several people pointed out that they feel that the identity of the neighbourhood has been lost. This has led to a feeling of abandonment and disrepute for part of the population: ‘We started looking for a house and an opportunity came up to buy a flat in the Leturia square (...) It is true that our environment was a bit like <<Ups, how are you going to go up there>>’.

Zumarraga Town Council leads a process of community participation to revitalise the upper neighbourhoods of the town

A third significant narrative has to do with the arrival of new people in the upper neighbourhoods. On the one hand, some residents feel that the newcomers do not contribute to recovering the neighbourhood identity. On the other hand, there is a perceived lack of spaces to say goodbye and pay a tribute to those who built these neighbourhoods. Moreover, the cultural and linguistic diversity of the new residents poses additional challenges for coexistence. However, there is another narrative that also recognises this diversity as an opportunity: ‘There are people who come from their countries or other places who have political differences, but once they are here we are all united and we put politics aside’. Concrete opportunities to improve coexistence were also identified, such as adjusting menus at community activities to include more inclusive options: "We don't usually go to those activities because we eat very different. More pork, meat too, and here everything has pork in it, even beans. And in the end, we don't usually participate".

Community sessions and co-creation

These perceptions, gathered during the listening process, were contrasted in various sessions open to the community. The aim of these sessions was to understand the different visions of the neighbourhoods and to explore possible responses to the challenges raised. Between 20 and 40 people from different backgrounds participated in each session: technicians and councillors from the City Council, users and managers of the senior citizens' centre, bar and shop owners, leisure and free time monitors, people linked to the church or the mosque, pharmacy staff, professionals from the Argixao senior citizens' centre, workers from the health centre and members of different associations. The community sessions discussed the findings of the listening process and underlined the importance of responding simultaneously to different needs, such as those of older people living alone and those of newly arrived families, or young people in the neighbourhood. Reflections such as these emerged during the sessions:

- It is true that there is a lack of prestige. This area used to be the Spanish-speaking area
but migration was not understood in a pejorative way. Now there is a feeling that migration
is understood as if they were second class".
- Children don't play together. There is division according to culture. - "This is an independent republic. We are quite neglected. The city council has to raise the road upstairs as well."
- We have to think about how to welcome people coming from outside. A popular meal could be an opportunity to do this".
- "We haven't had time to say goodbye to the people. It is necessary to recognise the people who have left and who built this neighbourhood. That mourning still has to be gone through."
- "I'd rather be signed up for everything than be alone. But I see a lot of people who are very lonely and don't want to leave."

In order to respond to the challenges mentioned above, two co-creation sessions were held. In these sessions, by decision of the participants in the process, three thematic areas were established: unwanted loneliness, grief and loss of the deceased, and new activities for the neighbourhood that build bridges. In each of these thematic areas different prototypes have been co-created and the aim will be to start developing them during 2025. To this end, a driving group has been created, made up of people from different associations or organisations, and its aim will be to give impetus to the portfolio of initiatives that has been proposed:

Unwanted loneliness; prototypes:

Solidarity café for people who feel lonely.
Story bank for people who want to share time with others.
Chain of favours for people who live alone in their homes and have difficulties in carrying out tasks and meeting some of their day-to-day needs.
Prototype to interconnect existing initiatives for people and organisations that promote and participate in activities in the neighbourhood.

Mourning and the loss of the deceased; prototypes:

Mourning Café for the whole community who have had a bereavement through death.
Memory tree for the whole neighbourhood, to bear witness and pay tribute to people who have died, responding to the narrative, ‘many new people are coming, but we haven't had time to say goodbye to our dead’.
Multicultural talk on mourning and death for all ages.

New activities

Pintxopote for people who live in the neighbourhood and also for the rest of the citizens.
Popular/cultural meal for people who want to share time with other people and meet with neighbours.
Portfolio of activities aimed at all residents and citizens.

Final learnings and conclusions

Throughout this process, the broad participation in the proposed community sessions has been remarkable. This reflects the need in society for spaces that allow for collective construction. Zumarraga Town Council promoted this process when it realised that previous programmes and projects were not achieving the desired impact, nor was it possible to find the key to addressing the challenges effectively. For example, some participants pointed out that one of the problems was the lack of knowledge of what was on offer: ‘we don't need new ideas, we need to reinforce what already exists and connect it better’. In this context, the implementation of an active listening process and openness towards co-creation, based on the neighbourhoods' own interests, has sparked a renewed interest in participating and activating the community.

A key learning from this process has to do with the role of the City Council, a scalable model for other public institutions seeking to generate community processes. On the one hand, there is the administrative, bureaucratic and organisational difficulty faced by public bodies in responding to complex challenges such as this. On the other hand, given the magnitude and complexity of the problems, the usual tendency is to fragment them into individual projects, with each one seeking to have its own impact and then trying to generate spaces for collaboration. However, this process demonstrates the need to address different issues simultaneously and in a connected way. What began as a conversation about unwanted loneliness ended up encompassing issues such as migration and neighbourhood identity.

All of these intersections make sense in a single context, and responses must be interconnected to bring about real change. It is important to recognise that this process, initiated in 2024, cannot immediately reverse the situation. However, it sets out a way forward that emphasises the need to create spaces for interconnectedness. Collaboration between different actors (organisations, communities, neighbours, etc.) does not arise spontaneously; it needs to be worked on and trained. On the other hand, this process also shows the complicated mission of maintaining the balance of responsibility for the process. It is very complicated to generate a community project from an institution, due to the very concept we have as a society of public institutions, and there are risks when it comes to understanding who this type of process depends on and what the role of each actor in the process is.