Category: Urban Activism

FeaturedArticles Cities for People Journalists Living in the City Meet the Urbanists: 21st Century Social & Economic Inequalities Talks The Public Realm Urban Activism USA

Designing a more inclusive city

ARTICLE

Allison Alrieff, The New York Times, 20 October 2017

“The Arsenal of Exclusion and Inclusion,” a forthcoming book by Tobias Armborst, Daniel D’Oca and Georgeen Theodore, who lead the architecture, planning and research collective Interboro, refers to such things — which include cul-de-sacs, cold water, “No Loitering” signs, the Fair Housing Act — as “weapons.” They are the policies, practices and physical artifacts used by planners, policy makers, developers, real estate brokers, community activists and others to draw, redraw or erase the lines that divide us.

Allison Arieff is the Editorial Director at SPUR and is a columnist for the New York Times.

For Allison Arieff’s twitter feed click here, for her New York Time option piece ‘Automated Vehicles Can’t Save Cities’ click here, and for a New York Times panel discussion on Tactical Urbanism where she was the moderator click here.

For Interboro’s Arsenal of Exclusion and Inclusion click here.

Cities for People Housing Philosophers Short Films The Public Realm Urban Activism

On how to make an attractive city

SHORT FILM

School of Life, 26 Jan 2015

Cities are a big deal. We pretty much all have to live in them. We should try hard to get them right. So few cities are nice, very few out of many thousands are really beautiful; embarrassingly the more appealing ones tend to be old, which is weird because we’re mostly much better at making things now.

For a related articles and short films by The School of Life on Ugliness and the Housing Crisis click here and on Relativism and Urban Planning click here.

Activists Articles Cities for People City Planners / Urban Designers City Solutions Meet the Urbanists: 21st Century The Public Realm Tools Urban Activism USA

What ‘Tactical Urbanism’ Can (and Can’t) Do for Your City

ARTICLE

Sarah Goodyear, CityLab, 20 Mar 2015

The phrase “tactical urbanism” came into use just a few short years ago, coined by a group of young planners and activists and popularized by an online guide to phenomena such as guerrilla wayfinding, pop-up markets, and DIY traffic-calming.

Many of those nimble urban-improvement techniques, which often originated in the activist community, have since gone mainstream. Cities such as San Francisco and Philadelphia, for instance, have been rapidly installing parklets where parking spaces used to go, a practice that originated with an annual grassroots action called Park(ing) Day.

To listen to a panel discussion about Tactical Urbanism, hosted by the New York Times and including Mike Lydon, click here.

To find out more about Mike Lydon and his Street Plans practice click here, for links to Street Plan’s books click here, and to download their guides to Tactical Urbanism click here. Several of these guides have been co-authored with similar placemaking firms around the world including Co-Design Studio (Australia), Ciudad Emergente (Chile), and TaMaLaCà (Italy).

Activists Talks Urban Activism

It’s our city. Let’s fix it.

TALK

Alessandra Orofino, TED, October 2014

Well, I believe that if we want to changewhat our cities look like,then we really have to changethe decision-making processesthat have given us the results that we have right now.We need a participation revolution,and we need it fast.

All of us, if we are reasonably comfortable, healthy and safe, owe immense debts to the past. There is no way, of course, to repay the past. We can only repay those debts by making gifts to the future.

Jane Jacobs, journalist

The greatest threat to our planet is the belief that someone else will save it.

Robert Swan, polar explorer