DIY Urbanism
Minneapolis Activists Use DIY Traffic Circles to Identify, Slow ICE
Residents are using the pop-up roundabouts to slow traffic and make their presence known on Minneapolis streets.
Portland Launches Tool for DIY Community Road Safety Interventions
A set of resources offers safety data and guidance for putting low-cost, quick-build interventions into action.
Guerilla Urbanism Spurs Action From Cities
Rather than take a hostile approach to DIY urbanism, some cities are using guerilla efforts as an opportunity to understand critical infrastructure gaps.
Tactical Urbanism Makes Strides in L.A.
A DIY urbanism group in Los Angeles has successfully prompted the city to install permanent crosswalks at dangerous intersections, despite the city’s insistence that the group’s do-it-yourself work is illegal.
How Tactical Urbanism Succeeds Where Bureaucracy Fails
Making the case for do-it-yourself infrastructure.
What Is Tactical Urbanism?
Tactical urbanism, one of the most common buzzwords in planning over the past decade, describes a variety of low-cost, incremental public realm design interventions.
DIY Crosswalks Appear in Hollywood
A group claiming the city of Los Angeles fails to protect pedestrians is taking action on their own, painting a set of crosswalks at a busy residential intersection.
Scottish Town Tackles Speeders with Blow Dryers
Mimicking traffic cops, local townsfolk have resorted to speed checking passing cars with blow dryers.
Traffic Safety Advocates Taking Action Into Their Own Hands
The San Francisco Transformation Agency is tired of watching cyclists and pedestrians die while the city promises more Vision Zero improvements.
DIY Urbanism and Top-Down Planning
Though projects tend to be hyper-local and temporary, Do It Yourself, Tactical, or Guerrilla Urbanism is an endorsement of the top-down planning model, rather than a repudiation.
Questioning the Privileges of Tactical Urbanism
Does tactical urbanism too-often benefit the point of view of a privileged population, leaving behind more pressing needs?
One Possibility for Activating Vacant Storefronts in Small Cities
A post on the blog for Utile, a Boston-based architecture and urban planning firm, recommends the coffee cart as a bit of DIY urbanism for cities like Lawrence, Massachusetts.
Sick of Speeding, Baltimoreans Deploy DIY Traffic Calming
Fed up with speeding cars, and a city bureaucracy seen as slow to respond to their complaints, residents and artists in Baltimore have taken it upon themselves to remedy the situation by creating their own traffic calming measures.
Have Parkcycle, Will Travel!
Ever wish your nearby park could follow you throughout the city, providing open space wherever you might be? An artist and landscape architect have created Parkcycle Swarm, a modular system of 'human powered mobile gardens'.
Cuffed for a Crosswalk: DIY Traffic Safety Intervention Gets Man Arrested
The arrest of a Vallejo, California man for painting a crosswalk at a dangerous intersection near his home is the latest guerrilla urbanist intervention to run afoul of the law.
Upending Trickle-Down Techniques for Creating Public Space
Michael Kimmelman looks at the wave of 'cheap, quick, temporary and D.I.Y.-style approaches' that are introducing a more successful means of creating public space than traditional trickle-down techniques.
Canadian Officials See Long-Term Threat from Short-Term Urbanism
A series of tactical urbanist interventions inspired by a recent talk given by Mike Lydon, Principal of the Street Plans Collaborative, have raised the ire of the powers that be in the Canadian city of Hamilton.
Bogota Plans Mass Tactical Urbanism Offensive
This weekend, Bogota, Colombia will launch its second 100en1día (100 in 1 day) event, a blitz of urban interventions meant to multiply the impact of citywide citizen activism exponentially. Cities across the world are following their lead.
Greek Financial Crisis Inspires Inexpensive Urbanism
Vivian Doumpa looks at three examples of bottom-up urban interventions completed in Greece, which show that a font of citizen spirit and ingenuity can help overcome the most draconian austerity measures.
Chicagoland Interventions Show the Value in Temporary Projects
Jared Green looks at some of the innovative projects recognized by Chicago's Metropolitan Planning Council (MPC) for their ability to creatively transform blighted lots into community assets.
Pagination
FREE Course: Walkable City 1: Why Walkability?
After describing his path towards focusing on walkability as the essence of good planning, Jeff Speck marches through his five principal reasons for making more walkable places.
Reinventing Malls: Planning Alchemy—Turning Gray Fields Into Gold
The course focuses on the opportunities and imperatives that shape reinvention of mall sites.
City of Thousand Oaks
City of Wisconsin Rapids
Harvard University Graduate School of Design
The Architects Foundation
University of Cincinnati Online
The Pocatello Development Authority
The Urban Renewal Agency of the City of Pocatello