Insurgent Public Space
Self-made urban spaces, reclaimed and appropriated sites, temporary events, and even flash mobs or informal gathering places created by predominantly marginalized communities—insurgent public spaces provide alternative expressions of the collective realms in the contemporary city. No longer confined to the archetypal categories of neighborhood parks, public plazas, and civic architecture, these spaces challenge the conventional, codified notion of the public and the making of public space. This reading list includes a collection of articles in the Places Journal (and more) that speak to the topic.
The City's Beach, Run by the People
Places Journal
Lincoln Beach once provided the only waterfront access for Black residents of New Orleans. Despite decades of city neglect, it remains a joyful, if contested, haven for ritual and play.
Public and Common(s)
Places Journal
A philosophical view of the terms public and commons, from the 20th-century treatises of Hannah Arendt and Jurgen Habermas to recent books by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri.
Tahrir Square: Social Media, Public Space
Places Journal
It wasn’t the Facebook revolution. An urban historian in Cairo argues that the occupation of public space was vital to the Arab Spring.
Beyond Zuccotti Park: Making the Public
Places Journal
In the wake of Occupy Wall Street, we need to focus on the making of the public as an engaged citizenry.
Occupying Wall Street: Spaces of Political Action
Places Journal
A survey of the physical places and virtual spaces of Occupy Wall Street, the hypercity built of granite and asphalt, algorithms and information.
Be Water, As in Liquid Public Space: Learning from Hong Kong's 2019 Protests
Medium
The 2019 protests in Hong Kong have overturned many accepted norms in terms of how the city and society can function. These norms include those that have historically governed the functions and meanings of public space.
The Urban Garden as Public Space
Places Journal
Dwelling as Resistance
Places Journal
Resistance against the expansion of Heathrow Airport has been led largely by an off-grid, eco-utopian community. Against the odds, it has used the art of dwelling to genuinely radical effects.
Makerspace: Towards a New Civic Infrastructure
Places Journal
Makerspaces are at once an emerging architectural and institutional typology and a manifestation of the so-called sharing economy. But will they last?
Little Libraries in the Urban Margins
Places Journal
One of the most promising dimensions of tactical urbanism is the rise of pop-up, guerrilla, and ad-hoc libraries.
The Interventionist’s Toolkit: 1
Places Journal
Provisional, opportunistic, ubiquitous, and odd tactics in guerrilla practice and DIY urbanism.
The Interventionist’s Toolkit: 2
Places Journal
DIY urbanists are making ingenious use of print media to spur urban activism — and sometimes revolution.
The Interventionist’s Toolkit: 3
Places Journal
How do we judge the success of DIY tactics — of ephemeral works that skirt the edges of activist art and community organizing?
The Interventionist’s Toolkit: 4
Places Journal
What happens when the grassroots tactics of activist designers collide with the top-down strategies of urban institutions?
The Accidental Planners
Places Journal
The Berlin activists who staged a protest at a vacant government building didn’t imagine they’d end up leading a €140 million redevelopment project.
Reading Detroit in a Season of Mourning
Places Journal
The grassy mounds that dot Detroit might be scrap heaps, or dumping grounds, or piles of ash and brick. But they are also unintentional artifacts in a tradition of monumentality and commemoration.
Detroit: Syncopating an Urban Landscape
Places Journal
Projects by artists, architects, and activists who are reshaping the abandoned landscapes of Detroit.
Tent City, America
Places Journal
Tent cities are now so common that advocates are campaigning to make them semi-permanent settlements of micro-housing. But is this a genuine solution or a cheap fix?
The Future Absence of a Tent City
Places Journal
The migrants’ camp known as the Baobab Experience persisted for years in Rome. Before the camp was bulldozed by police, a photographer and an archaeologist documented the improvised dwellings.
George Floyd and A Community of Care
Places Journal
At E. 38th Street and Chicago Avenue in Minneapolis, a self-organizing network explores what it means to construct and maintain a public memorial, a space for collective action.
Place of Refuge
Places Journal
For years Puʻuhonua O Waiʻanae has been a sanctuary for islanders unable to access conventional shelter. It also belongs to a deep Hawaiian history of resistance, inclusion, and care.
Parks and Houses for the People
Places Journal
The Scandinavian postwar welfare state has become a useful historical resource for the American left. But an earlier era of Swedish labor activism offers vital lessons for our own contentious times.
Guerrilla Urbanism
Urban Design International
Unsanctioned, unscripted, and seemingly “undesirable” activities have long appropriated urban spaces in routine and sometimes unexpected ways, bringing new meanings and unforeseen functions to those places. The growing acceptance of these practices creates important openings in the formalized planning systems for greater flexibility and expedient change. Yet, the institutionalization of previously informal and even subversive acts has resulted in concerns regarding co-optation and de-politicization. This special issue seeks to pivot a refocus toward these unsanctioned and unscripted urban activities as a form of counter-hegemonic spatial practices, distinct from their professionalized and institutionalized counterparts.