Hi everyone! This is the recap of Puerto Madero Accesible, a geo walk focused on accessibility that took place in December 19th as part of the One Accessibility initiative.
Five people signed up to the meet up and two of them attended: @ValeriaA_ and @Attrix.
The meet up was in Puerto Madero, one of the districts of the City of Buenos Aires. It’s usual to find both locals and tourists walking around the riverfront of the Dársena Sur, and eating and drinking on the many restaurants and bars in the area. There are also many offices around, different kinds of businesses, and a natural reserve.
With the idea in mind to verify the accesibility of the businesses in the riverfront, we met at the restaurant Bahía Madero and began our walk through the west side of the riverfront.
The buildings of this area in the west side all have similar architecture, and although there are offices on the top floors, there are mostly restaurants in the lower floors.
There’s an accessibility issue on this area of the west side:
To get to the riverfront you have to go down three steps, the big problem is that we didn’t see any accessible ramp to get to the riverfront so not everyone can enjoy the great views.
Furthermore, most of the restaurants in this area have two entrances: one by the riverfront and the other by the Alicia Moreau de Justo avenue, and nearly all of the entrances by the riverfront aren’t accessible because of stairs.
Here are the photos of the two entrances of La Parolaccia Casa Tua, that show the situation of many of these restaurants:
I did say nearly all of the riverfront entrances aren’t accessible, and not all, because we did see one nice ramp that belongs to a restaurant called Sorrento that may be the only accessible ramp connected to the riverside pathway. We also saw the -accessible- entrance to one of the buildings of the offices of Google Argentina, which was on the side of the building, before the steps.
We went on walking on this side of the river until we reached the Woman’s Bridge, which is the main landmark of Puerto Madero. We crossed the bridge, which is accessible, and continued our walk in the east side of the river. In this east side of the river buildings are more modern, and the architecture isn’t so similar. Most importantly, there isn’t a height difference between the riverfront and the entrances to the different businesses so everyone can enjoy the views effortless.
We walked on the riverside and some parallel streets, trying to hide from the sun, and also went to some near parks which we found out are accessible too.
There are definitely more accessible entrances on this side. The one’s that most stood out to me were:
- Mostaza, a really nice accessible ramp in the entrance.
- Raquel Forner park, that has many accessible entrances and is accessible inside too.
- Amalia Lacroze de Fortabat Art Collection, an art museum completely accessible with an accessible entrance and elevator.
- Hilton Buenos Aires, a hotel with accessible entrances, even an accessible revolving door, with accessible elevators.
We were able to verify the accesibility of around 60 places and find 33 accessible ones. It seems like despite the problem on the west side, Puerto Madero has more accessible businesses than Palermo Soho, where our last Accessibility Walk was.
You can click here to see more photos in our shared album.
Thank you for reading!
