Hi, my name is Mike Lydon, I’m a Principal with Street Plans Collaborative, an urban
planning, design, and research firm based in Miami, Florida and right here in Brooklyn,
New York.
For Planetizen, I'm going to be leading the course on Tactical Urbanism, which looks at
how short-term actions can be used to create long-term change.
The course will begin with a general survey of city planning trends from around the country
and actually around the world.
We’ll then move into looking at the definition of Tactical Urbanism and how it distinguishes
itself from other related movements like DIY Urbanism and Spontaneous Interventions, things
of that nature.
We’ll then run you through a history of Tactical Urbanism, demonstrating how this
movement, although it has a new name, is actually not that new and that we have precedents going
back to even as far as the 1500s.
From there, we'll look at how the patterns of Tactical Urbanism are being adopted nationwide.
And then finally in the second course, we're going to look at a bunch of case studies,
looking at un-sanctioned projects—those are more guerilla, and then also the sanctioned
projects—those are city led.
But we’ll also explain how many of the unsanctioned projects soon become sanctioned after they’re
deemed successful.
And finally, I will teach you how to actually carry forward a Tactical Urbanism intervention
yourself, whether you are a planner, a citizen advocate, or work for the city itself, we’ll
give you insight into how these projects become successful.
Hi, welcome to Tactical Urbanism: Short-term Action, Long-term Change.
This is Course 1 of 2 for Planetizen Courses.
As I record this today, I'm sitting in that brick building behind the plaza which is in
the DUMBO Neighborhood.
DUMBO is an acronym for Down Underneath the Manhattan Bridge Overpass, and you actually
see the bridge there next to our building.
So this is where we are located.
And in our work we do a lot of bike planning and pedestrian planning, placemaking in Tactical
Urbanism, we do a lot of web design as part of our projects and a lot of workshops and
trainings.
And our company was really started with the idea that research and advocacy would play
a very big role in defining the kind of work that we would do.
We’ve got a lot of various interests and we pursue those with outside research projects,
some of which become larger initiatives and paid projects, and help us develop expertise
in a variety of different areas.
So here's just a couple of our projects and publications and websites.
So, Tactical Urbanism is one of those.
And Nabeel Hamdi, who's a professor over in England, sums it up nicely when he says, “It's
about getting it right for now but being tactical and strategic about later.”
And so the whole concept is about how can we use short-term projects that cost little
money to help seed bigger, more permanent projects that are intended to create change
for the long-term.
What we’ve found, which is really exciting, is that the idea has resonated globally in
all types of cities, with all types of organizations and people, and just regular citizens.
It's a really exciting thing and we find that anyone can get involved, you know?
We don't own this concept, we didn't start this idea necessarily, and you’ll learn
about that later.
But the intent of Tactical Urbanism is to improve the lives of everybody if possible,
and to get things done.
We have a lot of challenges, which we’ll also discuss in the next chapter, facing our
cities.
And we find this is one of the tools in the toolbox that can help cities address those
challenges.
So, there are 8 Course Objectives today.
These are spread out over again over two courses, and I will explain all 8 right now.
So, we’ll consider the drivers of this movement, what’s behind Tactical Urbanism.
We’ll introduce and define the term with a bit more clarity, there are a lot of questions
about what makes Tactical Urbanism different from say, DIY do-it-yourself Urbanism.
So we'll explore that.
We’ll look at the history of this movement; and while the term “Tactical Urbanism”
is relatively new, a lot of concepts, ideas, and projects are not.
And I think that's a fascinating piece of information that we always are looking forward
to sharing with audiences because it's perceived as being new, but it's not.
We’ll understand the range of actors, whether they’re nonprofits or citizens, or city
governments or even business improvement districts.
There's a whole range of actors in this movement that are getting projects done in a very tactical
manner.
Course Objective 5: We will look at understanding the applications and limitations of Tactical
Urbanism.
There are some places where it works better than others.
And we’ll learn from key case studies; we’ll go through at least 8 case studies in second
course that explore in more depth how certain tactics are used to address certain problems,
and the results that we've been documenting since they've been first utilized, which is
exciting.
It’s one of my favorite parts of this discussion, is sharing all the great examples.
And it will help you, the person is watching this training and this course, understand
how to develop a Tactical Urbanism project yourself; what are the considerations, what
are the applications, etc.?
We’ll walk you through those steps.
And then at the end, the very end part of Course 2, we’ll share a lot of our resources:
the books that we’re reading, the manuals we’ve looked at, the publications that are
out there, that I think really are the underpinning of this movement.
There continues to be more and more of them, which is really great.
And we'll share some of those with you in case you're looking for even more information.
And with that, we’ll take it on to Chapter 2.