LousadaFITCity

Cities should be designed to be active! Cities should be designed with a human-centered approach... But what can we do to counteract those already built according to old paradigms based predominantly on economic growth? How do we face the challenges of inclusion, quality, and health? Can we rethink public spaces without spending vast amounts of resources? A physically active community can become the driving force to change the built environment, creating high-quality public spaces that contribute to people's health, happiness, and well-being. This option has become so crucial, especially in pandemic times, and we believe that sport has become much more important: The lessons learned during confinement pose new challenges for cities, as people's desire for well-being, pleasure, and happiness has been greatly supported by sports activities. In fact, rethinking our public and communal spaces means creating the conditions for outdoor community initiatives. With the LousadaFITCity project, we aim to use the existing urban routes to design trails throughout the municipality, easily identifiable (with a color-coding system related to the level of difficulty) and accessible to all (including people with mobility challenges and the visually impaired). Along these routes, outdoor workout stations (street workout) will be installed. These stations and routes will be supported by an app, Lousada Fit City, which will use augmented reality technology with an interactive experience that helps users make the most of the equipment. The most important aspect of this project is that this real investment in the population's health will last much longer than the project's implementation period.