Superwien went to the beach to support the Ministry of Tourism of Dominican Republic. This time the challenge was to work with the Ministry’s staff to develop a methodological battery that would allow them to co-design the beaches hand in hand with their users and citizens.

To develop participatory tools we took the case study of Guayacanes Beach 3. From the territorial work we realized certain issues that are recurrent when thinking about the design of beaches. Beaches are assets that not only respond to recreational logics, but also to environmental, social, cultural and economic ones. They must be approached from an integral planning perspective. This means that in the design process there should be instances of integration between the different areas of government, as well as vertically between the different municipal scales.

At the same time, we must not forget that it is key to apply participatory instances to integrate the needs of diverse community groups (such as merchants, gastronomic, tourists, residents, children, youth, etc.). In this way we generate rooted and contextualized designs that promote a more sustainable and inclusive urban future. The project is still running and we have the Knowledge week dated for next September.