Tactical urbanism, also commonly referred to as guerrilla urbanism, pop-up urbanism, city repair, D.I.Y. urbanism, [1] planning-by-doing, urban acupuncture, and urban prototyping, [2] is a low-cost, temporary change to the built environment, usually in cities, intended to improve local neighbourhoods and city gathering places. [3]
Tactical urbanism is often citizen-led but can also be initiated by government entities. Community-led temporary installations are often intended to pressure government agencies into installing a more permanent or expensive version of the improvement. [4]
The term was popularized around 2010 to refer to a range of existing techniques. The Street Plans Collaborative defines "tactical urbanism" as an approach to urban change that features the following five characteristics: [1]
While the 1984 English translation of The Practice of Everyday Life by French author Michel de Certeau used the term tactical urbanism, [5] this was in reference to events occurring in Paris in 1968; the "tactical urbanism" that Certeau described was in opposition to "strategic urbanism", which modern concepts of tactical urbanism tend not to distinguish. The modern sense of the term is attributed to New York-based urban planner Mike Lydon. [6]
The Project for Public Spaces uses the phrase "Lighter, Quicker, Cheaper", coined by urban designer Eric Reynolds, to describe the same basic approach expressed by tactical urbanism. [7]
The tactical urbanist movement takes inspiration from urban experiments including Ciclovía, Paris-Plages, [8] and the introduction of plazas and pedestrian malls in New York City during the tenure of Janette Sadik-Khan as Commissioner of the New York City Department of Transportation. [9]
Tactical urbanism formally emerged as a movement following a meeting of the Next Generation of New Urbanist (CNU NextGen) group in November 2010 in New Orleans. A driving force of the movement is to put the onus back on individuals to take personal responsibility in creating sustainable buildings, streets, neighborhoods, and cities. Following the meeting, an open-source project called Tactical Urbanism: Short TermAction | Long Term Change was developed by a group from NextGen to define tactical urbanism and to promote various interventions to improve urban design and promote positive change in neighbourhoods and communities. [10]
Tactical urbanism projects vary significantly in scope, size, budget, legality, and support. Projects often begin as grassroots interventions and spread to other cities, and are in some cases later adopted by municipal governments as best practices. Some common interventions are listed below:
Sabotaging hostile architecture
The Street Plans Collaborative, Inc. (dba Street Plans) in collaboration with Ciudad Emergente and Codesign studio, produces a series of free tactical urbanism e-books. Volumes 1 and 2 focus on North American case studies, Volume 3 is a Spanish-language guide to Latin American projects, and Volume 4 covers Australia and New Zealand, including responses to the 2011 Christchurch earthquake.
Street Plans' Mike Lydon and Anthony Garcia published a tactical urbanism book in March 2015. [22]
A sidewalk, pavement, footpath in Australia, India, New Zealand and Ireland, or footway is a path along the side of a road. Usually constructed of concrete, pavers, brick, stone, or asphalt, it is designed for pedestrians. A sidewalk is normally higher than the roadway, and separated from it by a kerb. There may also be a planted strip between the sidewalk and the roadway and between the roadway and the adjacent land.
A pedestrian crossing is a place designated for pedestrians to cross a road, street or avenue. The term "pedestrian crossing" is also used in the Vienna and Geneva Conventions, both of which pertain to road signs and road traffic.
New Urbanism is an urban design movement that promotes environmentally friendly habits by creating walkable neighbourhoods containing a wide range of housing and job types. It arose in the United States in the early 1980s, and has gradually influenced many aspects of real estate development, urban planning, and municipal land-use strategies. New Urbanism attempts to address the ills associated with urban sprawl and post-Second World War suburban development.
Traffic calming uses physical design and other measures to improve safety for motorists, car drivers, pedestrians and cyclists. It has become a tool to combat speeding and other unsafe behaviours of drivers in the neighbourhoods. It aims to encourage safer, more responsible driving and potentially reduce traffic flow. Urban planners and traffic engineers have many strategies for traffic calming, including narrowed roads and speed humps. Such measures are common in Australia and Europe, but less so in North America. Traffic calming is a calque of the German word Verkehrsberuhigung – the term's first published use in English was in 1985 by Carmen Hass-Klau.
A street is a public thoroughfare in a built environment. It is a public parcel of land adjoining buildings in an urban context, on which people may freely assemble, interact, and move about. A street can be as simple as a level patch of dirt, but is more often paved with a hard, durable surface such as tarmac, concrete, cobblestone or brick. Portions may also be smoothed with asphalt, embedded with rails, or otherwise prepared to accommodate non-pedestrian traffic.
A curb extension is a traffic calming measure which widens the sidewalk for a short distance. This reduces the crossing distance and allows pedestrians and drivers to see each other when parked vehicles would otherwise block visibility. The practice of banning car parking near intersections is referred to as daylighting the intersection.
Beautification is the process of making visual improvements to a town, city, or urban area. This most often involves planting trees, shrubbery, and other greenery, but frequently also includes adding decorative or historic-style street lights and other lighting and replacing broken pavement, often with brick or other natural materials. Old-fashioned cobblestones are sometimes used for crosswalks; they provide the additional benefit of slowing motorists.
Hollywood Boulevard is a major east–west street in Los Angeles, California. It runs through the Hollywood, East Hollywood, Little Armenia, Thai Town, and Los Feliz districts. Its western terminus is at Sunset Plaza Drive in the Hollywood Hills and its eastern terminus is at Sunset Boulevard in Los Feliz. Hollywood Boulevard is famous for running through the tourist areas in central Hollywood, including attractions such as the Hollywood Walk of Fame and the Ovation Hollywood shopping and entertainment complex.
A woonerf is a living street, as originally implemented in the Netherlands and in Flanders (Belgium). Techniques include shared space, traffic calming, and low speed limits.
A living street is a street designed with the interests of pedestrians and cyclists in mind by providing enriching and experiential spaces. Living streets also act as social spaces, allowing children to play and encouraging social interactions on a human scale, safely and legally. Living streets consider all pedestrians granting equal access to elders and those who are disabled. These roads are still available for use by motor vehicles; however, their design aims to reduce both the speed and dominance of motorized transport. The reduction of motor vehicle dominance creates more opportunities for public transportation.
Bike lanes (US) or cycle lanes (UK) are types of bikeways (cycleways) with lanes on the roadway for cyclists only. In the United Kingdom, an on-road cycle-lane can be firmly restricted to cycles or advisory. In the United States, a designated bicycle lane or class II bikeway (Caltrans) is always marked by a solid white stripe on the pavement and is for 'preferential use' by bicyclists. There is also a class III bicycle route, which has roadside signs suggesting a route for cyclists, and urging sharing the road. A class IV separated bike way (Caltrans) is a bike lane that is physically separate from motor traffic and restricted to bicyclists only.
Guerrilla gardening is the act of gardening – raising food, plants, or flowers – on land that the gardeners do not have the legal rights to cultivate, such as abandoned sites, areas that are not being cared for, or private property. It encompasses a diverse range of people and motivations, ranging from gardeners who spill over their legal boundaries to gardeners with a political purpose, who seek to provoke change by using guerrilla gardening as a form of protest or direct action.
A road diet is a technique in transportation planning whereby the number of travel lanes and/or effective width of the road is reduced in order to achieve systemic improvements.
Complete streets is a transportation policy and design approach that requires streets to be planned, designed, operated and maintained to enable safe, convenient and comfortable travel and access for users of all ages and abilities regardless of their mode of transportation. Complete Streets allow for safe travel by those walking, cycling, driving automobiles, riding public transportation, or delivering goods.
Eastern Parkway is a major east–west boulevard in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. Designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, it was built between 1870 and 1874 and has been credited as the world's first parkway. At the time of its construction, Eastern Parkway went to the eastern edge of Brooklyn, hence its name.
The Culver Boulevard Median Bike Path is Class I rail trail bicycle path, walk route and linear park on Culver Boulevard in western Los Angeles County, California.
A parklet is a sidewalk extension that provides more space and amenities for people using the street. Usually parklets are installed on parking lanes and use several parking spaces. Parklets typically extend out from the sidewalk at the level of the sidewalk to the width of the adjacent parking space.
The East River Greenway is an approximately 9.44-mile-long (15.19 km) foreshoreway for walking or cycling on the east side of the island of Manhattan on the East River. It is part of the Manhattan Waterfront Greenway. The largest portions are operated by the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation. It is separated from motor traffic, and many sections also separate pedestrians from cyclists. The greenway is parallel to the Franklin D. Roosevelt East River Drive for a majority of its length.
A guerrilla crosswalk is a pedestrian crossing that has been modified or created without jurisdictional approval, and with the intent of improving pedestrian and other non-automobile safety. These interventions are a common strategy within tactical urbanism, a type of low-cost, often temporary change to the built environment intended to improve local livability. Guerilla crosswalks have been noted in news articles since at least 2009 and have become more well known as an urban strategy in recent years. The first known example of guerilla crosswalks can be found in Canada in 1987 when social activists John Valeriote and Erik Veldman created a crosswalk in Guelph, Ontario for students to safely cross a busy road in front of their school.
A stroad is a type of thoroughfare that is a mix between a street and a road. Common in the United States and Canada, stroads are wide arterials that often provide access to strip malls, drive-throughs, and other automobile-oriented businesses. Urban planners have criticized stroads for their safety issues and poor efficiency. While streets provide access to shops and residences at safe traffic speeds, and roads can efficiently move traffic at high speed and volume, stroads pose dangers to drivers and pedestrians and are also prone to congestion.
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ignored (help)As Bellingham elected officials and traffic engineers are deciding where to prioritize transportation projects such as roads, bike lanes and sidewalks over the next several years, some residents are seeking a speedier remedy. They're trying to goose the bureaucracy into taking quick action to slow the commuters ... To get the city's attention earlier this year, about 50 Columbia residents spent a few hours building a pair of DIY crosswalks, using colored chalk and some traffic cones, materials that cost about $200
There's a name for when community members make unsanctioned changes to city-owned streets: "tactical urbanism."