Once thought to be an urban design trend, April’s Landscape Architecture Magazine focuses its April issue on the enduring power of Tactical Urbanism. Along with many other colleagues and collaborators, Street Plans’ work is prominently featured in the Magazine’s lead article.
“The appeal of these kinds of interventions is a kind of made-by-hand aesthetic,” Lydon says. “It feels very human. It speaks to people who are not designers in a very important way. Most people who engage with these spaces don’t read Landscape Architecture Magazine. They don’t understand an axial or an aerial plan. But they get the immediacy and the human quality and the materiality.”
As one of the movement’s founders, Mike Lydon recognizes the limits of temporary public space. Tactical urbanism isn’t going to solve issues such as affordable housing, access to transit, and food access, but it can be done in tandem with that, he says. “It’s never about just the one day or the one month of the project, but where we are on the arc of transformation and making political and social change.”
It’s Landscape Architecture month, so the whole issue is free!
What specific examples of Tactical Urbanism are highlighted in the lead article of the magazine?