Tactical urbanism, also commonly referred to as guerrilla urbanism, pop-up urbanism, city repair, D.I.Y. urbanism, planning-by-doing, urban acupuncture, and urban prototyping, is a low-cost, temporary change to the built environment, usually in cities, intended to improve local neighbourhoods and city gathering places.
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.
Terminology
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: A deliberate, phased approach to instigating change; The offering of local solutions for local planning challenges; Short-term commitment as a first step towards longer-term change; Lower-risk, with potentially high rewards; and The development of social capital between citizens and the building of organizational capacity between public and private institutions, non-profits, and their constituents.
While the 1984 English translation of The Practice of Everyday Life by French author Michel de Certeau used the term tactical urbanism, 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.
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.
Origin
The tactical urbanist movement takes inspiration from urban experiments including Ciclovía, Paris-Plages, 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.
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.
Types of interventions
Tactical urbanism projects vary significantly in scope, size, budget, 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:
