Tactical Urbanists

By Lauren Brown

‘Tactical Urbanism’ has recently popped up on The Urbanists’ radar. It appears to be something that has been weaving its way across America in numerous forms for a number of years. In its simplest form Tactical Urbanism refers to alternative tactics for change in the built environment that ordinary people can initiate.

A group of urban planners and designers ‘The Street Plans Collaborative’ have summarised the extent of such initiatives in two publications - “Tactical Urbanism” Volumes 1 & 2. The publications examine case studies of implemented projects across America.

The majority of the case studies are focused around groups of friends, neighbours or local activists partaking in ‘guerrilla’ activities. Examples of these include improving unused green verges (‘guerrilla gardening’), turning recycled goods into street furniture and turning parking bays into urban parks. 

Left: Guerrilla gardening. Right: Temporary outdoor seating accommodating on-street parking

A large majority of the initiatives draw attention to the increased need to focus engagement and ‘doing’ at a local level as opposed to how engagement may be typically understood – merely as a chance to comment  on high-end large scale transformations. All of the projects included are quick and effective interventions that ordinary people can initiate and implement with or without organisational or political support. The highlighted projects are fun, swift and easy and have been implemented without any prior design, implementation or regulatory advice. 

Left: 'Weed-bombing' - painted weeds to look like flowers. Right: A Park(ing) day temporary park

A lot of the projects can provide useful precedents for community engagement and as a way of cheaply and effectively piloting planned long term improvements. ‘Intersection repair’ is a particularly good example of this. It is a community project born from a local desire to create a more unique place within the gridded sea of Portland’s grey intersections. A local action group facilitated local residents to get together with some tins of paint and create a simple, bright sunflower mural in the street, instantly creating a distinctive place with local meaning.

Intersection repair creates a distinctive neighbourhood environment
All images: Tactical Urbanism, The Street Plans Collaborative

Initiatives like this can prove low risk and high reward by evaluating the levels of need and use in order to establish if money is going to be well spent and a worthwhile investment where long term improvements may be planned. They provide local solutions to what could be a regional or national problem – in this case a lack of identity, poor neighbourhood image and problems with traffic.


This is relevant to the Urbanists' work at the moment, particularly in relation to some environmental improvement projects with some local RSL's. An important underpinning of this type of work is engagement with the local community and establishing ways to get local people involved with environmental changes in their area. This approach could minimise initial costs and risk for the RSL whilst establishing local ownership and highlighting the benefits to the local community. 

Tactical Urbanism is an interesting read and highlights some easy and effective short term projects that local authorities, associations and user groups can facilitate in order to improve towns, cities and neighbourhoods – even for just one day. Local communities taking control of their public realm results in both improved spaces and enhanced social cohesion. The impact of these initiatives could be even greater if the community have the support of designers, planners and other built environment professionals.

“I ride my bike through the sunflower intersection when I come home from work. It makes me happy” – If some paint on a road can make one person smile everyday then it has to be worth it?