European Reference Indicators for Public Facilities and Services. Approach to an Integrated Production in Reference Values for the Basic Social Services Infrastructure

摘要

Public services should 'live' in public facilities allocations. According to this, one must fit into the other; in the same way as citizens should find an answer in the residential park offer or production activities seek their location in the industrial areas. This high level of engagement needed is not produced. Services and facilities coexist in an historical isolation. In addition to this, while services are provided by administration, facilities are at proposal of the town plans. In this context, how can they keep a good relationship? How planning guarantees enough land to allocate public services? Of the great range and variety of public services, some of them are recognized in the countries constitutional texts as essential or universal citizen's rights. All State Main Texts of different European Nations protect the right of their citizens to enjoy -at least- a good public education, quality in provision of health services and enough offer in assistance to persons. These services, which could be labeled as 'public basics', are widespread respected and unquestioned, thus an acceptable level must be provided by administrations. This minimum threshold in basic public services should be understood as a common European level, in order to give a reference point to governments for the provision of public services. Basic public services are strictly connected to people because of their essential and universal nature. Services, whose necessity remains unmodified although race, culture, education, nationality, etc. of users' changes. Their universal nature allows the possibility to express them in values per capita, so indicators are possible and needed. Same thing with facilities; there is a minimum amount of basic public facilities that must be preserved and protected, according to the constitutional texts of European Countries. The aim of the ongoing research is to obtain indicators for basic public services and basic public facilities, all expressed in values per capita, which will enable both subjects to be viewed in relation to each other in order to discover if they work together. A methodology for the equivalence of service and facility indicators will be also obtained. The final step would be the production of 'basic recommended values' as European Reference Indicators for Public Facilities and Services which gives the name to the research.