The manual for tactical placemaking
A parking lot in Somerville, MA, is turned into a temporary square. Photo by Dan Bartman, copyright Tactical Urbanism, Island Press.
The housing crash of 2008 caused much suffering—bankruptcies, foreclosures, and unemployment included—but no dark cloud is without a silver lining. Among the bright fringes—sprawl was disabled and citizens sought low-budget ways to revitalize cities and towns. Out of the latter, Tactical Urbanism took hold.
The trend was identified and named by Mike Lydon and Anthony Garcia, urban designers of the millennial generation who founded Street Plans Collaborative. Tactical Urbanism is applied to what William H. Whyte described as the “huge reservoir of space yet untapped by imagination.”
Tactical Urbanism: Short-Term Actions for Long-Term Change is a valuable text for citizens, public-sector planners, and developers alike. The book is easy to read, clear, and is all about action—something you can’t say about many planning-oriented texts.
Tactical Urbanism revitalizes streets and public spaces with temporary, inexpensive materials and treatments as a test for more permanent measures. This could involve restriping or taking over a portion of the street, or creating a public plaza in a parking lot.
The first Build a Better Block in Oak Cliff, Dallas. Photo courtesy of Team Better block. From the book Tactical Urbanism, Island Press
Tactical Urbanism amounts to more than “do-it-yourself” (DIY) projects by those who are frustrated at the injustice and permanence of automobile-dominated public space. As the authors explain: “Not all DIY urbanism efforts are tactical, and not all Tactical Urbanism initiatives are DIY.
Citizens and planners need tactics in the fight over who owns streets and public space (driver or pedestrian/bicyclist). New York City’s Department of Transportation used tactical techniques to give half of Times Square to people on foot, the authors explain. The project began with cheap, movable planters and folding chairs, which showed that new traffic patterns with fewer lanes allowed automobiles to still flow while making better use of space in the third-most-visited crossroads on Earth. After a period of success, the changes were made permanent.
Car-free Herald Square in New York City. Photo by Mike Lydon. Copyright Tactical Urbanism, Island Press
Similarly, a political logjam over a new square in Somerville, Massachusetts, was broken with food trucks and temporary seats set up in a parking lot. Citizens discovered the value of the public space (see photo at top).
When something new is planned, citizens most clearly imagine what they are losing. The loss may include a parking lane or a high-speed travel lane. Only by building something can many citizens take ownership of a new benefit—like public space or walkability. Tactical Urbanism shows the benefit without investing too much too permanently.
Tactical Urbanism can be used by cities, by citizens, and developers. Among the first applications in modern times occurred in Seaside, Florida, to seed low-budget commercial operations in the town center. Lydon and Garcia explain that “simply defining and designing beautiful public space is not enough. Ritual and use have to be further instigated; without the programming and activities—the rituals of daily life—that take place in public space there can be no urban life.”
Goals, strategies, and tactics
Planning starts with goals—like getting more people to walk and bicycle or strengthening downtown businesses. Strategies follow, like allowing higher densities around transit stations, retrofitting streets, or changing parking policies. “Although this approach does work in certain contexts, entrenched interests remain recalcitrant, outdated policy barriers stymie progress, and leadership voids leave well-considered plans, and their strategies, on the shelf. … Planners, developers, and advocates alike need tactics that help grease the wheels for implementation from the inside out and the outside in.”
Temporary materials and installations allow ideas to be tested and data gathered. If the project doesn’t work as planned, changes can be made while the budget is not exhausted. “This iterative process not only creates better projects but also continues the momentum established during the conventional planning process.”
Historical precedents
Tactical Urbanism had many historical precedents. Unlike most thoroughfare innovations in the last 100 years, the Dutch “woonerf” did not originate with transportation engineers or planners. “The woonerf was created when a group of residents in the Dutch city of Delft grew frustrated with the growing problems related to safety, congestion, and pollution as car use increased in their compact and otherwise walkable city,” they write. In the face of official inaction, the citizens tore up portions of their pavement late at night so that cars had to maneuver around the obstruction at low speed. With little evidence of any resulting disruptions, the municipality quietly ignored the change. In 1976, the national parliament voted to incorporate the woonerf into the national street design standards. Today the woonerf is accepted internationally as a traffic engineering type.
Citizens can use Tactical Urbanism when all else fails. The old adage, “it’s better to ask forgiveness than permission,” applies in many cases. Consider Lou Catelli of the Hampden neighborhood of Baltimore, who one evening used spray paint to create a crosswalk at a busy intersection. The city had repaved the intersection in 2011 and failed to repaint the crosswalks and stop bars, and motorists “stopped noticing the stop signs,” the authors write. The DOT threatened civil and criminal action, but the local council representative defended Catelli. “Catelli was never charged, and the city returned soon thereafter to complete the striping of the street.”
Lou Catelli uses sprawl paint to create a crosswalk when the city never returned to complete the job. Photo by Deborah Patterson. from the book Tactical Urbanism, Island Press.
Catalyst for investment
Tactical Urbanism sometimes is a catalyst for significant investment. Broad Avenue in Memphis was a forgotten main street that began to receive some planning attention in the mid-2000s—but the momentum stopped with the housing crash. A group of neighborhood activists decided to jumpstart revitalization using a tactical approach. They raised $25,000 for the effort called A New Face for an Old Broad, which included crosswalks painted by school children, “pop-up” storefronts occupied by local businesses, and the implementation of a “road diet” using angled parking and temporary bike lanes along a three-block stretch.
“What transpired next exceeded all expectations. Using little else but Facebook to promote the event, they drew more than 15,000 people to the 2-day demonstration, which set off a wave of reinvestment. More than $20 million in private investment ensued. The angled parking and bike lanes were never removed.
A section on finding and buying materials is useful—especially since the book is not aimed primarily at professional engineers. Tactical Urbanism is nothing if not useful. City planners and public works officials should buy it and use it. So should developers of new urban projects and every bike-walk advocacy group in the US and Canada.
Tactical Urbanism will not, by itself, transform America. But it is a valuable tool, suited to the times, to move America toward a more livable place.
Tactical urbanism: Short-Term Actions for Long-Term Change, By Mike Lydon and Anthony Garcia. Island Press, 2015, $25.00 softcover. 260 pp.
Note: Mike Lydon will be at CNU 23 in Dallas April 29-May 2 to discuss Tactical Urbanism.
Robert Steuteville is the editor and executive director of Better Cities & Towns.
