[Narrator] Ron Thompson was frustrated.
[Ron] We have this traffic that flows through here
with folks speeding
[Narrator] The year was 2018.
He'd requested that the city government of DC
install a crosswalk
at a dangerous, confusing intersection.
[Ron] We have a school sign that isn't even visible.
You can't see the flashing lights.
[Narrator] Then in 2019, just blocks away
a pedestrian was killed.
So Ron decided to act.
He teamed up with another activist, Michael Kercher,
and they painted a crosswalk themselves.
It was illegal, but they felt the risk was worth it.
What Ron and Michael did
is one example of a broader movement,
called tactical urbanism.
[Mike] At the heart of the tactical urbanist
is a commitment to community,
citizens making their cities better,
one action at a time.
That is basically how cities got built
from the very beginning.
[Narrator] Across the country,
people frustrated with the pace of change
in urban infrastructure
are taking matters into their own hands.
And a surprising thing is happening.
Instead of fighting back, cities are embracing the approach,
partnering with tactical urbanists
to bootstrap improvements in infrastructure.
[Mike] These projects are aimed at making a better street,
a better block, a better city.
[Narrator] This is Mike Lydon.
He and his partner, Tony Garcia, run Street Plans,
an urban planning firm
that uses tactical urbanism techniques
to change city infrastructure quickly.
[Mike] Within cities, there's a lot of inertia.
There's a lot of competing demands.
Kind of, the common thread is
"well, if the city government's not doing it
and if my neighbors aren't doing it
and the local businesses aren't doing it,
I'm going to do it."
And so, like, the best example of that
are the little free libraries
that pop up around the globe.
That's the smallest kind of scale of intervention,
but it signals a care for the public realm.
[Narrator] For the most part, tactical urbanism projects
are meant to be temporary,
made quickly and on the cheap
with readily available materials.
They're like a proof-of-concept for urban planning projects.
But if people like a project,
it can be a fast-track method
to get a city to make a permanent change.
[Tony] Today we've been building a bike lane in Ojai.
The community has some concerns about it.
And so what they've asked us to do
is to demonstrate it using short-term materials,
so that we can make adjustments,
the city can make adjustments over time,
and then those learnings can be incorporated
into the final design.
[Mike] We've really seen evolution in tactical urbanism,
going from under-the-cover-of-night, no permission,
that still occurs,
but as this movement has evolved,
more and more,
we're working with cities
that are asking for that to happen.
Jersey City is this incredible place.
[Barkha] It's the third, most-densely-populated,
large city in the nation,
after New York City and San Francisco.
And as more and more people live in Jersey City,
they all can't move around the same way that they used to.
[Mike] The city has challenges with pedestrian safety.
And so we were hired as a team to make it safer,
more beautiful, more inclusive, et cetera.
[Narrator] The Jersey City government tapped Street Plans
to quickly iterate on a bicycle master plan,
part of the city's broad push
to make streets safer for cyclists and pedestrians.
[Barkha] Using tactical urbanism,
we're able to get something out on the ground,
test it, have a conversation with the community,
and if it doesn't work, to take it away.
And if it works, to really go all in
and scale up the project.
[Mike] We set up temporary, protected bike lanes.
And at that time,
Jersey City had no protected bike lanes in the city.
And so we did this over one weekend.
It was really meant to engage
and showcase what protected bike lanes are.
[Narrator] A couple of tweaks were made,
but the Jersey City government finalized the designs
in under a year.
More bike lanes are in the works,
and Jersey City streets are already safer, as a result.
[Barkha] We've installed about 10 miles of protected bike lanes
in just over a year.
We're seeing, you know,
major increases in cycling on many of our streets,
up to 200% in some cases.
[Mike] A city the scale of Jersey City,
10 miles creates an impact,
and we're just getting started.
Up until the winter of 2020,
we felt like tactical urbanism was being steadily adopted
at a pretty exciting clip,
but what the pandemic ushered in
was kind of an explosion of tactical urbanism.
[Barkha] With the pandemic, we see that there's a need
for things like outdoor dining.
There's a need for a different way to use the street,
which happens to align with the way
that we've been wanting to think about transportation
for a long time, anyway.
[Mike] It's really unfortunate that is what created this movement
at even a bigger scale,
but all the principles of temporary, flexible, quick
proved to be made for this moment.
[Barkha] How has it been working out?
- It's good.
[Barkha] Good?
- Yeah, I'm thrilled about this, so--
[Barkha] Good.
- It proves to be a (inaudible)
[Barkha] Yeah, it's looking like it.
[Mike] You know, seeing the outdoor dining,
seeing the streets closed to cars so families can go out,
it brought a level of joy and normalcy back
at a time when we need each other more than ever.
[Tony] I have an urgency to this work,
and I think it's important for us
to accelerate the good things that we can do
in the world.
[Mike] The barriers to change is us.
If we break down those barriers,
we can make lots of great things happen very quickly.
[Narrator] Hey, thanks for watching this video,
made possible by Ford.
If you liked it, share it with a friend.
And check out Freethink.com
for more stories of people moving the world.