Search Results (11)

Tactical urbanism (TU) and Virtual Reality (VR) both aim to reimagine physical spaces, with TU utilizing rapid, temporary, scalable, and cost-effective physical interventions to test and refine urban design, while VR offers immersive virtual environments for exploration and analysis. This article investigates the integration of VR with TU to address challenges in effectively communicating and evaluating temporary urban interventions. This study is grounded in a literature review on spatial perception, TU, and VR, followed by an empirical experiment involving Brazilian college students. Participants interacted with a parklet installation in both physical and virtual environments, with their spatial perception and emotional responses evaluated using the AR4CUP (Augmented Reality for Collaborative Urban Planning) protocol. The results demonstrated that VR positively impacts the perception, usability, and social dynamics of urban spaces. Participants emphasized the importance of social interaction and recreational activities, reinforcing VR’s potential to simulate and refine urban interventions. A crucial avenue for future research is identifying best practices for using VR as a platform for collaborative design and decision-making. This step could enhance VR’s effectiveness in creating public spaces that align with community needs, fostering participatory planning and promoting inclusive, functional, and enriching environments. Full article

Mothers in Amman Downtown frequently report feeling unsafe and excluded from public spaces. This study explores the impact of multiple layers of oppression, coupled with inadequate public spaces, on mothers’ perceptions. Using an intersectional lens, we examine how various identities intersect to shape the experiences and perspectives of motherhood in urban environments, helping us better understand the challenges faced by marginalized groups in public spaces. Ethnographic methods, including semi-structured interviews, focus group discussions (FGDs), and field observations, were employed. The research highlights how the absence of care-supportive environments forces mothers to develop spatial tactics, such as cutting their trips short and returning home, seeking permission from shop owners to use private restrooms, or using their cars as temporary caregiving spaces, as a response to their exclusion. The findings offer deeper insights into the experiences of mothers, highlighting the need to address their specific needs and preferences in the design and management of public spaces. This study emphasizes the importance of fostering social and gender equity through interventions tailored to the diverse needs of mothers, with a particular focus on creating sustainable, care-supportive environments in public spaces. Full article

In the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic and the resultant stay-at-home mandates, local governments in some cities in the United States implemented programs in response to the pandemic. This article focuses on Slow Streets, which were several programs implemented in eleven cities (Los Angeles, Oakland, San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, Denver, Chicago, Minneapolis, Detroit, Boston, and New York) in the United States. The programs were intended to keep people healthy by providing temporary public spaces on residential roads where residents were allowed to exercise and socialize. Some practitioners characterized the programs as tactical urbanism or tactical placemaking and as agile responses to the public health crisis. The programs deserve a critical reflection, considering their potential impact on community health and the limited amount of the literature on the program in terms of design justice, which is an approach to design that prioritizes marginalized communities and challenges their structural inequality. This reflective study attempts to fill that gap in the literature of architecture and urban design. This article aims to examine whether the Slow Streets programs promoted design justice. To address that aim, we propose a social justice framework to evaluate the program, because social justice is essential to design justice. Data from publicly available information online about the eleven cities’ Slow Streets programs, interviews, surveys, focus groups, and the interdisciplinary literature support the qualitative research. The study outcomes suggest that the Slow Streets program had limited success because their attention to the priorities of underserved populations was ineffective. We argue that while the programs provided a timely response to the pandemic, the programs did not adequately address the vulnerability of low-income communities of color due to the limited consideration of design justice. Building on the lessons from social justice and human geography, the article concludes with recommendations for future practices including place-cultivating and human geography-informed design to better serve vulnerable communities of color. Full article

In this study we consider correlated and simultaneous interventions regarding: i—the physical infrastructure (by crossover lines between the two tracks of a tram line), ii—the characteristics of the trams (by bi-directional trams), as well as iii—tactical and operative decisions of the line manager. How these interventions are reflected in the functional reliability of the tram line service is demonstrated for both cases of the current operation and for the case of overloads, respectively, for the case of the temporary degradation of circulation caused by random disruptive events. The theoretical analysis, generalizing findings regarding the effectiveness of solutions to improve functional reliability, is supplemented with quantitative evaluations related to certain situations of disruptions. The proposed solutions aim to increase the attractiveness of urban public transport. Even if the evaluations are focused mainly on the interests of the service quality perceived by the user, the beneficial consequences for the line manager (in terms of technical and commercial efficiency) are also addressed. Full article

This paper aims to explore how we can utilize temporary and tactical urbanism in urban regeneration, focusing on its ability to redistribute power relations and foster inclusive processes. The research analysis compares two urban regeneration projects that were implemented under the concept of temporary urbanism in South Korea. The first case involves the transformation of a declining shipbuilding yard area into a cultural and small retail sector, while the second case is a regeneration project of an abandoned municipal cultural center. To identify detailed differences and similarities, this research tracked the project processes and changes in relationships through in-depth interviews and the analysis of related documents. The significance of these cases lies in illustrating two distinct paths of urban transition, from informal to formal and legitimate territory. This research suggests temporary urbanism as a means of introducing new ideas and functions into urban space, especially within the context of formal and informal relations. Full article

This article explores the application of innovation–diffusion theory to tactical urbanism projects. The objective of the study is to comprehend how innovation–diffusion theory can be utilized to analyze and evaluate these projects and identify the factors contributing to their success. The research was conducted through a collaborative design studio experience, using qualitative methods that largely depended on participatory observations and interviews with key participants. The findings indicate that the Innovation–Diffusion theory can serve as a comprehensive theoretical framework for the analysis and evaluation of tactical urbanism projects. The study also identified factors that contribute to the success of these projects, such as the involvement of opinion leaders, the use of low-cost and temporary interventions, and the flexibility to adapt to on-site variables. Full article

This work aims to evaluate how a temporary school square implemented in the city of Bologna under the principles of the tactical urbanism approach impacted on vehicular patterns through exploiting TomTom Floating Car Data (FCD) from before and after the intervention. Such data, passively collected by vehicles acting as moving sensors on the network, have been used for the analyses instead of data collected through usual methods. After statistical validation of available datasets through two-tailed paired Student’s t-tests, trend analyses have been performed on sample sizes and speed-related values to detect global variations in the first place, and more thoroughly among clusters of road segments based on graph-calculated distance from the intervention site. Results suggest that traffic flows have been relocated from segments directly affected by the intervention, where a decrease has been registered (−23.87%), towards adjacent streets or segments in a buffer area, which have recorded an increase (+3.51% and +3.50%, respectively), so the phenomenon of traffic evaporation did not take place as opposed to more widespread tactical urbanism interventions described in the literature. OD matrices per 15-min time fractions over the three selected peak time slots have been extracted in order to obtain reliable input data for a future development of traffic microsimulation models. The extraction method is based on least squares optimization problems solving systems of linear equations representing OD flows assigned to the observed link, after selecting a set of $\overline{k}$ shortest paths through a Path Size Logit (PSL) model. Even though the availability of large amounts of data could not overcome typical underdetermination of the problem, due to the key issue of data dependence among traffic counts, the validation of retrieved matrices returned good results in terms of correlation between observed and estimated link flows. In the few cases where the quality of correlation fell, underlying causes have been investigated and the influence of outliers, amplified by the high fragmentation of the provided road graph, might represent the core problem. Full article

In the last decades, the emergence of new social, environmental, and economic demands, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, has led urban planning to innovate its themes, methods, and approaches. In this context, temporary urbanism has emerged as a mainstream approach. How-ever, the impacts of temporary approaches to urban planning are far from being fully understood. In this light, this study focuses on one of the mainstream approaches to temporary urbanism, tactical urbanism, and tries to understand its economic impacts on contemporary cities. Indeed, despite the growing interest in tactical urbanism interventions and their value as an urban regeneration tool, there are no specific reflections focused on investigating their economic effects. Based on these premises, this paper focuses on different tactical urbanism experiences in the Italian context and tries to assess the economic impacts of tactical urbanism interventions by adopting the lens of real estate values as a suitable proxy when dealing with urban environments. The first obtained results show that the experiences of tactical urbanism, partly because of their temporary nature and their tendency toward minimal intervention, fail to trigger regeneration processes or produce significant economic impacts on the territory. Instead, such experiences can play a role in accelerating or consolidating urban regeneration processes already underway, and, in this sense, they contribute to the generation of economic impact on the territory. Full article

During the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a lot of discussion about keeping interpersonal distance to prevent the virus from spreading. To keep this interpersonal distance, authorities at different levels have taken measures to reduce people’s interactions, such as reducing capacities, curfews, pop-up cycle lanes, temporary pedestrianisation, and lockdowns. Many of these temporary measures have been perceived from a static view. Nevertheless, in a scenario of “new normality” or in the face of a possible new pandemic, the amount of data (big data) generated by different sources, such as sensors, in large cities has extraordinary potential to be used together with tactical urbanism for quick adaptation. The aim of this study was to gain insight into the aforementioned issues by analysing spatio-temporal patterns of pedestrian mobility and developing a variation of the pedestrian level of service measure; the pandemic pedestrian level of service (P-PLOS). This measure provides a dynamic view of pavement capacities according to the interpersonal distance recommendations during the pandemic. P-PLOS was tested in the city of Madrid based on the pedestrian counter data that was provided by the local government through its open data website. We found that the application of P-PLOS, together with street design, allows for knowing where and when it is necessary to take tactical urbanism measures in order to maintain or improve the level of service, as well as where it is necessary to take measures to reduce pedestrian flow. Full article

The paper aims to evaluate the value that the experimentation of tactical urban planning activities can assume for the city, through the critical account of some practices in three Italian cities of large (Milan), medium-large (Bari), and medium size (Taranto), which in recent years, in some cases unknowingly, have experienced its effects, also forced by the thrust offered by the need to respond to the consequences of the pandemic. The authors reflect on how short-term interventions started by tactical urbanism movement are inspiring planning institutions to implement short-term place-making initiatives. The contribution moves within the context of new generation urban regeneration in which the transformation of existing spaces is a process of community reconstruction through the redevelopment of public spaces increasingly open to multiple and temporary uses. First through a process of rereading the state of the art of the project of public spaces in Italy and its transformation caused by the pandemic, then through a comparative look between the three case studies, conclusions are drawn on the urban value of the experiments conducted and, on their ability, to identify a new reference point for the sustainable urban regeneration of public spaces. Full article

A singular and modest activist action, a temporary park created in San Francisco, grew into the global urban Park(ing) Day (PD) phenomenon. This tactical urbanism event not only expanded to be annually celebrated in thousands of parking lots all over the world but became an inspiration for urban planning and policy changes. The permanent rendition of Park(ing) Day, parklets, resulted from the movement but did not stop the spread of PD itself. This article presents case studies from New Zealand and Poland, two geographically and culturally distant locations where PD has further developed and evolved gaining local qualities. Through research methods such as research in design, secondary data analysis and expert interviews we study the trajectory of PD evolution and the role and interpretation of it in different parts of the globe. The results show a narrative of successive popularisation and institutionalisation as well as diversification. Departing from its grassroots, guerilla and assertive traits, PD has grown to become an artistic, creative and urban planning tool. As an established, recognised action and an ‘attractive’ idea, PD has great potential for designer education, allowing a venue for implementing methods such as design-build and live project. Full article