Cities are in constant transformation due to population growth and construction. Urban residents who are exposed to these changes need to develop lifestyles that are compatible with city life in order to create a more livable and peaceful environment. Urban open spaces, which have different floor and surface types but do not define a closed space, gain importance with their physical, social and economic benefits.
Innovative urban intervention approaches; In addition to being local, short-term, low-risk and realistic, it aims to provide educational, communication-supportive, reliable living environments where different segments of the society can spend time together, socialize, and provide very low-cost practices. One of the urban interventions with these aims is the tactical urbanization approach. This approach is an important tool to increase the urban user-space interaction for the use of space in urban open spaces.
Piazzale Bacone / ©Comune Milano
Today, the relations that cities have established with their citizens have begun to strengthen with the efforts to re-functionalize public spaces. It has become widespread to make healthy, accessible, nature-friendly and easily applicable projects in empty urban spaces that have lost their functionality on a large or small scale. In Tactical Urbanism, flexible, creative and light interventions are applied to integrate deep changes in the urban context of cities into urban life. In tactical urbanism, an alternative method is proposed to carry out an intervention in the city, operating mainly at the scale of a small street, block or building.
Rockaway Brewery and Culture Lab / ©streetplans
Although the interventions created through neighborhoods or a certain street-street axis seem to affect a small-scale area, they are a positive move both for the physical structure of the neighborhood and for activating the social life in the neighborhood. Tactical urbanization practices create spatial effects with different qualities depending on many different purposes and functions. It is possible to come across tactical urbanization approach applications in squares, playgrounds, park areas, botanical gardens, watersides, sports areas, and in areas such as market places that are used by the citizens and provide opportunities for encounters.
In this part of the article, world examples that serve the tactical urbanism approach will be given.
Jinjiang District Yucheng Street Renovation Project
Designer: Fanzhu Design
Location: Chengdu, China
Yucheng Street Renovation Project furniture design / archdaily.com.
Jinjiang District Yucheng Street Renovation Project is a renovation project that provides city connections to the private commercial units on Yucheng Street and aims to eliminate the public deficiency. Buffer zones that will help increase the interaction along the street axis have been determined, and designs have been created that can balance the pedestrian activity at certain intervals in this street area that moves in its own flow. Street furniture with a similar design language has been placed along the road for pedestrians.
Yucheng Street Renovation Project intervention areas drawing / archdaily.com
Agora Maximus Pedestrianization Project
Architect: LAAB Collective, Signature Design Communication
Location: Montreal, Canada
Agora Maximus / ©Raphael Thibodeau
In tactical urbanism applications, it is very important to attract the attention of the user with different urban furniture or transformations. Tactical urbanism is based on the idea of gathering people from different interests around a common urban area. Agora Maximus is a pedestrianization project designed with dotted coloring on the floor area of the area where the urban furniture samples, designed based on three color groups in terms of similar building materials and colors, are placed. Platforms along the street in a modular way provide accessible open spaces for pedestrians to socialize and enjoy the scenery.
Agora Maximus/ ©Raphael Thibodeau
Praça da Árvore
Architect: Lazo Arquitetura e Urbanismo
Location: Alto Santa Teresinha, Brazil
Praça da Árvore / ©Morgano Nunes
Praça da Árvore, in the context of tactical urbanism, is a design built as a temporary square that increases the sense of responsibility and commitment to the place from the construction phase. While adopting a tactical urbanism approach, strategic moves come to the fore in designs produced for urban space. For example, the design can cover most of the potential users living there, or projects that focus only on disadvantaged groups can be designed. At Praça da Árvore, children played a participatory role in the development of the design. Small workshops were organized with children and their families, and the products created as a result of this workshop contributed to the production of the project in the later stages of the design.
Praça da Árvore / ©Pedro Celso
These practices create rich areas in the city where they are located, shaped by ensuring the interaction of the participants, and subsequently having interrelated functions, where the urban presence can remain socially alive; creates spaces that can be used jointly in urban open spaces with the understanding of tactical urbanization. According to the opinions of the users about the designs created, they can evolve into different shapes with changes in the process.
References
https://doi.org/10.31198/idealkent.1140121
https://www.archdaily.com/974989/praca-da-arvore-lazo-arquitetura-e-urbanismo?ad_medium=gallery
