Minor, ephemeral and (only apparently) quasi-banal interventions did not truly find their places in the histories of architecture, being inflated rather by the aesthetic imagination and the technical courage of one could call Grand Projets, that is grand edifices or expensive projects.
What would a non-glorious, alternative history would look like, being preoccupied by spatial practices only, by the meaningful life in the public space, with minimal interventions and energetic actions, rather than monumentalized shapes? Could one imagine a modern history of architecture and urban planning articulated by trends such as Play Streets (New York, 1914), Open Streets (Seattle, 1965), Guerilla Gardening (New York, 1973), Pavement to Plazas (New York, 2006) or Weed Bombing (Miami, 2011)?
Well, the Street Plans Collaborative initiative, marked by the “Tactical Urbanism” booklet and posted on issuu.com, resonates with our interests in the Urban Report section, mapping the cultural-spatial trends and the urban “folders” of resistance in the interstices of the great American modern urbanism, in metropolitan centres, but also in easy-going peripheries (sprawl), in neglected places which motivated citizens adopt though and in which operate spontaneously at the edge between legal and illegal. Thus, the booklet comes up as both a manifesto and a guide for new spatial practices (at the border of several subjects), and as an introduction for another kind of urban historiography, concise and extremely suggestive through the selected examples.
The “tactical urbanism” phrase is launched by the team of contributors led by Mike Lydon, to unify conceptually a series of niche, small-sized and wider socially addressed practices, connected to the aspiration for a better life, a fairer one and more diverse in town. The “short-term action/long-term change” motto opens up a critical discourse on the attitude of great municipalities asking only formally the opinion of the citizens about the great project designed “up-down”, about whom locals do not have any minimal understanding of adequate control. Lydon’s call is a commonsense one: to honestly commit citizens in smaller, temporary projects, before great political and financial commitments leading to final solutions, without ignoring though a long-term responsible planning.
Generated as a reaction to the global recession, the demographic changes and the development of information networks, “tactical urbanism” implies an instigation to a change, local solutions, realist short-term expectations, low risks, but high benefits and, especially, the development of social capital (public-private partnerships, non-profit organizations and activists). Strengthened by serious sources of theoretical inspiration (from Jaime Lerner to Nabeel Hamdi), the examples taken from the United States articulate clear concepts, extremely well motivated socially, such as park(ing)day, pop-up cafes, shops and town-halls, chair bombing, food charts, street fairs, ad-busting, micro-mixing etc.
Our Urban Report Section salutes the principles of the “tactical urbanism” and continues to map alternative practices closer to us, in Europe, but also from far away, at the other side of the globe. We publish in this very issue three examples of alternative practice in Austria, by the Austrian office Fattingerh Orso Architektur (modular experimental, low-tech buildings in the public space for art events) and an ephemeral urban installation, made of recycled materials, in the New Zeeland, based on the need of social cohesion and the activation of an unused space, made by the Gap Filler team with volunteers.
* Photo: Déjà-vu -Linz; photocredit: Peter Fattinger
