Introduction to the special issue

A year ago the Journal of Urbanism published a special issue on the topic of DIY urbanism. So great was the response to the call for papers for that issue that this second volume has now been assembled. Taken together, the two issues represent a diverse snapshot of DIY urbanism at a moment when strands of its DNA are everywhere, and its influence can be seen at both micro and macro scales. Outside Washington, DC, in suburban Montgomery County, Maryland, local residents place their old, unwanted dining chairs and lawn furniture at the local transit authority’s spartan bus stops, providing a much-needed resting spot for weary bus commuters. At the other extreme, Alejandro Aravena, winner of 2016’s Pritzker Architecture Prize, is pioneering the concept of “half a good house” in providing subsidized urban housing in his native Chile by letting residents add amenities and additional space to simple homes as their own resources permit. Illustrating just two of the ways that DIY urbanism has begun to permeate planning, design and urban policy, these examples and the six articles in this issue also speak to the reach of DIY urbanism, well beyond the youth enclaves where it is often assumed to predominate.

This special issue continues to explore the myriad ways in which DIY urbanism continues to shape communities and highlights the diverse settings into which its influence has reached. In her contribution Adeola Enigbokan, an artist and environmental psychologist, shows how DIY – a concept with a long cultural significance in Russia – is being used by modern Russian artists and activists to meld expression with activism in a unique form of citizen-based planning. Sociologist Gordon C.C. Douglas turns his attention to those responsible for DIY interventions, finding that they often have significant training and education in design and planning despite – or perhaps informing – their clandestine approaches to implementation. The contribution by Wesley E. Marshall, Andrew L. Duvall and Deborah S. Main explores how the concept of DIY urbanism can scale up when utilized as a form of prototyping; in this case the authors illustrate how the official B-Cycle bike share system in Denver, Colorado, has its roots in an ad hoc DIY bike share system organized for the 2008 Democratic National Convention. Using analytical approaches from science and technology studies, meanwhile, Taylor Dotson shows how the Quartier Vauban neighborhood in Freiberg, Germany, has been developed as a highly sustainable and communitarian community over the last 25 years because of its roots in a highly participatory, citizen-led planning approach with clear DIY connections. Similarly, from Denmark, Louise Fabian and Kristine Samson present a compelling case study of the increasingly complex interplay between DIY-inspired tactics and the formal development sector, questioning the durability of DIY as part of a strategy of resistance and self-help in an economic environment of pervasive co-optation and profit seeking. Finally, David Spataro critiques the popular Tactical Urbanism handbook (Street Plans Collaborative 2012), arguing that its depoliticized stance toward DIY approaches devalues some of the activist precedents – in this case the Food Not Bombs movement – upon which the modern variant of DIY urbanism has been built. While each of these authors addresses critical questions about DIY urbanism from a range of theoretical perspectives, central to each is a desire to better understand how incremental actions, initiated by motivated citizens, contribute to the complex mosaic of urban life.

Donovan Finn
Sustainability Studies Program
Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY