So many placemaking projects originate, and stagnate, in municipal development departments. 

Or else they get massaged into initiatives that the town or city wants to do anyway. 

The city planners pretend that they are soliciting citizen involvement and idea, and go through the motions, but you end up with something that feels preordained. 

Could "tactical placemaking" be a way around that? 

What is Tactical Placemaking?

Tactical Placemaking is the act of building short-term installations in public spaces.

It’s DIY, guerrilla, pop-up. 

You don’t have to wait for town or city approval. 

It’s also known as tactical urbanism, urban acupuncture, guerrilla urbanism, planning-by-doing, pop-up urbanism, urban prototyping, DIY urbanism.

Basically, it’s lighter, quicker, cheaper. 

It’s short term, low cost.

It can be a simple as a bench, or some shade; or  as complicated as a pop-up wifi network, a giant live subway map, an internet and metaverse-connected gumball machine (hey, that sounds familiar). 

It can be in the physical world, or somewhere in the metaversal, multiversal, AR/VR, gaming world. 

Remember: You don’t have to ask permission. 

You can just get building. 

Here's a YouTube Short on the subject: 

And here's a playlist on the topic: a bunch of videos, one after the other. 

You can navigate these videos one at a time here.

Or just sit back and watch them unwind, below: 

A few more resources: 

• A Tactical Urbanist's Guide to Materials and Design v.1.0
• Connecting People & Places: The Power of Tactical Urbanism & Placemaking (The photo at the top of this post comes from this site: Caption: "Installing 6th & Going in Portland at VBC 2013." Credit: Greg Raisman)