The General Planning Plan for Santa Cruz (PGO) remains hanging in time again in a city that, after the annulment of the last planning, has a PGO in force dating from 2005. On this occasion, the Urban Planning Department, at the head of which is Guillermo Díaz Guerra, has decided to terminate the contract to the editors of the PGO (they had been awarded for 1.1 million), which thus returns to the hands of the Management technicians. Now, Urbanism’s commitment is to update the planning in force through specific modifications, which will be faster, while, “in parallel”, the work is reorganized around the new General Plan.
This was announced yesterday by the Councilor for Urbanism, Guillermo Díaz Guerra, who defends that this decision has been taken to “give a new focus to the General Plan”, while prioritizing the development of “specific modifications” over the current planning, with which solutions to specific problems will be given.
As DIARIO DE AVISOS has been able to learn, the termination of the contract has been made by mutual agreement with the editorial team, which, in recent months, had undergone important changes in its structure, which made it difficult for it to meet the deadlines that had been established in contract. The document, in the Advance phase, was already a year and a half behind schedule.
Díaz Guerra defended yesterday that the objective of this measure is “to give a new impetus to this document, with a different refocus.” In addition, he added that “we must give a new approach to the drafting of the General Plan, which is adapted to the needs of the capital for the coming decades and the challenges it faces, in terms of sustainability and socioeconomic development.” Meanwhile, “efforts must be focused on resolving those issues that affect small areas of the territory but that, once resolved, will lead to an improvement in the short term.” “It is about promoting specific modifications and special plans, with several objectives, among others, putting more land on the market and thus curbing the excessive increase in housing prices,” he said.
The Cs spokeswoman, Matilde Zambudio, criticized this new delay yesterday: “The municipal government is once again breaking its word when it assured that the new PGO would be approved at the beginning of 2023.” The mayor, who described the management as “disaster”, asks that it be used to boost the endowments in the neighborhoods.
