The Yabra Area Renovators are back in Belize for the second phase of project planning. As we told you in February, a team from the IDB's American Planning Association came to do an evaluation and inspection of the area and also to connect with the community. The vision behind this project is to revitalize Yabra and restore its historical value and beauty. Well today at City Hall, Mayor Darrell Bradley and the planning team gave us a more comprehensive overview of that project.
Darrell Bradley, Belize City Mayor
"City Council is working on a series of activities in partnership again with the Inter-American Development Bank and the American Planning Association to really emphasize the sustainable development goals. One of the real points of the sustainable development goals is to make cities more livable. We've spoken a lot about the idea of urban planning, there have been a lot of interest in terms of zoning and capacity building. One of the things that we recognize is that the City council is very limited in terms of its capacity, hence the partnership with the Inter-American Development Bank and the American Planning Association, so that we have a group of planners from the APA who are in country. This is not the first time that they are in the country and focusing on particularly on an intervention in the Yabra area."
Participant
"The idea of community based planning and community engagement is really important. You can do plans, meetings, set up good policies and ideas but there isn't real buy-in, investments and participation in the development of the ideas for how a community or a city changes, it really needs to come from the people in the community."
And from all that researching and ground work in the community, the team has come up with what is called a Land Use Plan. The main idea behind it is to better organize the spaces and areas in the city, specifically in the Yabra area. City Planner Carla Patnett discussed the significance of this plan and how these areas will be divided.
Carla Patnett
"One of the areas that they found in other countries and as well as in Belize is that it is necessary to organize the development and growth of the city, hence the land use plan."
"We have looked at all the different parcels of the city and we looked at where we are right now. We've identified something like this, we've categorized all the different parcels into different land uses. Initially we came up with 9 different uses from commercial, high density, residential, industrial, mixed uses, public, semi-public and undeveloped and rural wetlands as well."
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