Here is a great article in the NY Times about some proposed methods for socializing streetscapes in New York. Many of them seem like the could be done on some level as a DIY approach, very similar to the Park(ing) Day events around the country
04/06/2008...9:59 am
Taking Back the Streets
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5 Comments
04/06/2008 at 1:44 pm
Not sure how much of that stuff could be done DIY, but it was a great article. Bring on the Woonerf.
04/06/2008 at 3:22 pm
I was thinking about the parking spaces bbq. How great would it be if on sundays and holidays if people came and set up picnic tables and had little parties and festivals were the point wasn’t to shop, though that can be a good time too. Instead, people would just hang out, eat, drink and talk shit. It happens everyday, but if it were acceptable then people could be creative and really do it up. People would show each other, like the urban chili cook-off taken to the streets up with bigger grills, hand painted signs, the smell would be killer.
Then there are examples of more anarchist methods of blocking streets, the physical detournement.
I see kids playing in the street all the time. Why don’t they start directing traffic so they can play ball.
There is a spectrum of tactics that ranges from radical to conventional, maybe the appropriateness is based on the context of the street.
I see an increasing fuzzy line between the ability to plan some pre-concieved order and planning for order to be made spontaneously. I’ll try and clarify some of this later, but for know.
Even the woonerf is premised on the idea of eliminating the order that we have designed into the environment. By doing so people are on an equal footing with pedestrians, bicycles…
04/06/2008 at 3:50 pm
To me, the woonerf seems like just another kind of order. Order isn’t going to be completely eliminated, just as it doesn’t control everything, and this seems like a different, but parallel tactic for achieving the results that are deemed desirable now, versus the results that were desired when conventional street types were conceived and deployed. [It would achieve results that I would personally prefer, but it seems to me that planning is planning, and this is just one prescriptive solution versus another].
04/06/2008 at 5:35 pm
Yeah, I just meant the “designed” order has certain intentions. And the woonerf,like naked streets, sort of un-designs those intentions.
04/08/2008 at 3:08 pm
i’ve seen bits and pieces of this sortof thing, especially in some more marginalized communities. i mean spontaneous block parties, street vendors, kids taking over a block to play a game, that kind of thing. if the design of streets and regulations can do more to allow people to use these public spaces great. they are for people, afterall, not just for people in cars.