10/5/2017 Friday Fun: How tactical urbanism is shaping cities for people, by people | TheCityFix

A World Resources Institute website publications programs donate WRI sites Search WRI

Login | Signup

About Us Our Team Become a Contributor Topics TheCityFix Brasil TheCityFix Trkiye TheCityFix Mexico

Urban Development
Search TheCityFix
Friday Fun: How tactical urbanism is shaping cities Advanced Search

for people, by people

By Alex Rogala March 6, 2015 0 Comments
Follow Us on Twitter

Tweets by @WRIcities
WRISustainableCities
@WRIcities

Dr. Venkat @sumantran launches his

new book, "Faster, Smarter, Greener:
The Future of the Car and #Urban
Mobility." ow.ly/Btnf30fFhyz

47s

WRISustainableCities
@WRIcities

WEBINAR: Inclusive TOD: Affordable

housing & local economic development |
October 10
#TransitOrientedDevelopment
Colorful intersection repair is one example of how citizens are using tactical urbanism to improve cities and ow.ly/p32730fBRdX
make them more human-centered. Photo by Greg Raisman/Flickr.

Like many DIY, post-recession movements that have sprung up in the past few years, tactical urbanism Embed View on Twitter
is human-centered and empowering. At its core, its about people making the city work for them. Rather
than relying on governmental actors, the tactical urbanism movement empowers individual citizens to
make their streets, their neighborhoods, their cities the places they want them to be. Projectslike
installing street signs more useful than the official onesare typically low-budget, informal, and east to
implement, allowing people to become actively engaged in civic life in a way that yields fast, concrete
Share Find Us On Facebook
results.

Uneven Growth, a current exhibition at New Yorks Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), explores the WRI Ross Cente
potential of tactical urbanism at the global level. Bringing together thought leaders and practitioners from 8.8K likes
Hong Kong, Istanbul, Lagos, Mumbai, New York, and Rio de Janeiro, the exhibition examines how the
citizen-driven movement is changing conventional relationships between people, public space, housing,
and natural environments. Although the exhibitions proposed solutions have been criticized for having
lofty, unrealistic ambitions, Uneven Growths online platform retains the movements original DIY ethos,
Like Page
as users everywhere can submit examples of tactical urbanism from their own communities.

Tactical urbanism encompasses a wide spectrum of projects that are shaped in the unique contexts of 2 friends like this
our cities and communities. They often emerge in very different circumstances and for very different
reasons. Some are completely individual and grassroots; others are inspired in collaboration with local
non-profits. Here are four examples from the Uneven Growth exhibition that stood out to us and
represent the diverse range of forms tactical urbanism can take.

Quito, Ecuador
http://thecityfix.com/blog/tactical-urbanism-shaping-cities-people-alex-rogala/ 1/4
10/5/2017 Friday Fun: How tactical urbanism is shaping cities for people, by people | TheCityFix

Proyecto Frida
Blogroll

C40 Cities
CEOs for Cities
Citiscope
CityLab
CityTalk
CityTalk USA (ICLEI)
Cooltown Studios
Future Cape Town
Gehl Live (Gehl Architects)
Insights (World Resources Institute)
Next City
Places Wire
Planetizen
Project for Public Spaces
This making-of video shows how the Frida Project was built and how this car makes Quitos streets Shareable: Cities
brighter, more enjoyable places. Video from YouTube. Smart Cities Dive
Sustainable Cities (World Bank)
Many cities are currently grappling with rising rates of car ownership and over-dependency on private The Dirt (American Society of Landscape
vehicles. Quito is something of an exception. Only 26 percent of residents use private cars as their Architects)
primary mode of transport. The Frida Project takes advantage of this to reimagine the citys streets as
The Guardian Cities
collective public spaces for people, not cars. Built with recycled materials and unskilled labor, Frida
The Transport Politic
radically plays with our concept of what a vehicle is by substituting chairs and a communal table for an
TheCityFix Brasil
isolated transport experience. Frida is structured in the rough shape of a car, but transforms parking
TheCityFix Mexico
spots into human-centered public spacessort of like a mobile parklet.
TheCityFix Turkiye
As Fridas creators note, This car does not take you long distances, but instead takes in ideas, dreams, Transport for Development (World Bank)
and relationships. Where it parks, instead of occupying space it provides a place for citizens. After all, Treehugger
tactical urbanism often aims to challenge the impersonality of traditional design and make the city work URBANET
for people. Velo Mondial
WRI Ross Center for Sustainable Cities
Istanbul, Turkey

Start the video at 1:45 to see residents of Istanbuls Beyoglu District stop and check out the Kopfkino
project. Video from Vimeo.

As many people increasingly rely on data-driven apps and platforms like Google Maps to navigate their
cities, some skeptics have worried that our streets are losing their traditional element of chance, surprise,
and mystery. Kopfkino (roughly, head theater in German) is a project to revitalize those aspects of the
urban experience. Using a shopping cart as their base, a group of friends in Istanbul built a portable
projector that casts users faces onto building facades when they peer into a laptop camera. Kopfkino
invites the curious passerby to pause from his or her regular routine and discover a new experience in a
familiar place.

DIY projects in public spaces like Kopfkino are popping up all over Turkey. However, unlike some other
examples of tactical urbanism, Kopfkino likely wasnt intended to be replicable or scalable. The point,
however, is to challenge what it means to encounter other people in public space, and to revisit the idea
that every city offers an individual and unique experience.

Antofagasta, Chile

http://thecityfix.com/blog/tactical-urbanism-shaping-cities-people-alex-rogala/ 2/4
10/5/2017 Friday Fun: How tactical urbanism is shaping cities for people, by people | TheCityFix

Two men sit at a makeshift concrete table in Antofagasta, Chile, where tactical urbanism is a growing trend.
Photo by Pablo Guerra/Flickr.

Situated on the Pacific coast in the far northern deserts of Chile, Antofagasta isnt naturally brimming
with green spaces. However, Ciudad Emergentea Latin American non-profit that promotes tactical
urbanism as a form of public participationorganized a community bike ride for collective tree planting
earlier this year in order to raise awareness about the potential of urban greenery. Along the route, gray-
water recycling workshops taught participants about irrigation and bottom-up maintenance.

Ciudad Emergente aims to empower neighborhood residents to take control of their public spaces, and
to show how urban greenery can be about much more than top-down city beautification.

Chengdu, China

120 volunteers from China and Japan helped put up temporary classrooms made of paper tubes after an
earthquake destroyed Hualin Elementary School in May 2008. Photo by Forgemind
ArchiMedia/Flickr.

After the Sichuan earthquake of May 2008 devastated an elementary school in Chengdu, the local
education bureau needed a quick way to get students back in a stable learning environment. In a
http://thecityfix.com/blog/tactical-urbanism-shaping-cities-people-alex-rogala/ 3/4
10/5/2017 Friday Fun: How tactical urbanism is shaping cities for people, by people | TheCityFix
collaborative partnership between Shigeru Ban Architects from Japan and Chengdus community
leaders, 120 Japanese and Chinese volunteers came together to design and construct temporary
classrooms entirely out of paper tubes. By opting for cheap, recyclable, reusable, and readily available
paper, the volunteers were able to build nine classrooms in about forty days.

Novel projects like this demonstrate how the flexible, responsive nature of tactical urbanism can provide
effective disaster relief to cities in times of need.

Are tactical urbanism projects picking up steam where you live? Let us know in the comments!

RELATED POSTS

Friday Fun: Lessons and Innovations from Indias Temporary City, the Kumbh Mela
Cities by People: Talking Tactical Urbanism with Mike Lydon
Friday Fun: Chinas dancing grannies vow to dance on
Friday Fun: Greening the street for better public spaces
Friday Fun: Open Data Day puts the city back in citizens hands

Tags: Alex Rogala, Antofagasta, Chengdu, citizen empowerment, DIY, Friday Fun, green, istanbul, public participation,
Quito, tactical urbanism, urban greenery

0 Comments TheCityFix
1 Login

Sort by Newest
Recommend Share

Start the discussion

LOG IN WITH
OR SIGN UP WITH DISQUS ?

Name

Be the first to comment.

Subscribe d Add Disqus to your siteAdd DisqusAdd Privacy

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

http://thecityfix.com/blog/tactical-urbanism-shaping-cities-people-alex-rogala/ 4/4