Disonancias

Activity

The council or municipal corporation is the administrative body for the municipality, and, accordingly, its mission is to manage the city, the day to day running of public services and municipal needs.

As a complement to this daily management, it must also think to the future, developing strategic projects, and this is where the council’s participation in the Disonancias project for 2008/09 comes in.

Department that will provide the framework for the research

The research will be carried out within the framework of the Commerce Support Office, which the Council set up in 2003 to contribute to the promotion and development of commerce in Vitoria-Gasteiz.

With the aim of supporting the maintenance, improvement and consolidation of the city’s commercial sector, different areas of action have been developed and instruments have been created to give them impetus:
• Sectoral Board of Commerce: Instruments of consultation and participation for all agents in the city’s commercial sector who become participants in initiatives of commercial promotion.
• Commerce observatory: Instruments that facilitate access to information of relevance to the sector; providing data, statistics and studies that make it possible to understand the situation of commerce in the city and enable the agents in the sector, i.e. managers, experts or traders, to make decisions.
• Economic aid: Specific support for companies in the commercial, services or catering sector, as well as to new entrepreneurs in these areas, through economic support specially directed at these sectors.
• Training: geared towards unemployed people who need to acquire a professional profile adapted to market needs in areas associated with the commerce and services sector. Also continuous training directed towards professionals in the sector.
• Management of street sales markets.

Team involved in the DISONANCIAS project

The municipal team that will work on the Alhondiga project (*) is of an interdepartmental nature. The project is led from the mayor’s office, under the co-ordination of the Mayor’s Adviser. Two municipal departments are involved:

Department of Economic Promotion and Strategic Planning. Commerce Support Office.
 Director of the Department
 Head of the Commerce Support Office

Department of Town Planning. Urban Development. Projects.
 Director of the Department
 Head of the Public Highways Service

(*) Alhondiga Project is a city project of urban regeneration whose ultimate purpose is to create an Urban Park for Shopping and Services, as an axis for the coordination of policies in the areas of city development, trading, tourism, infrastructures, etc…

Investigation to be carried out within DISONANCIAS framework

To research, encouraging the participation of the agents involved, into new ways of giving social and commercial impetus to the city centre, given the mass scale of frequentation of the shopping centres and malls on the periphery. For this purpose, access will be provided to use and behaviour studies that have previously been carried out.

Type of exploitation of result

Option A.

Location and web page

Vitoria-Gasteiz. www.vitoria-gasteiz.org