Document Type
Presentation
Publication Date
August 2011
Publication Title
American Sociological Association Annual Meeting
Disciplines
Place and Environment | Urban, Community and Regional Planning | Urban Studies | Urban Studies and Planning
Abstract
This study examines “spatial interventions”: street art, guerrilla gardening, public space invasions, and other unauthorized practices of place-based, site-specific art or activism that challenge the normative uses or meanings of particular urban spaces. In recent years, a growing number of individuals have taken up these forms of site-specific direct action. Some argue that they represent new strategies of political expression, even “resistance”; others, that it is little more than vandalism or pointless juvenile acting out. Yet my research suggests that many of these actions are rather connected by something more subtle, a simple willingness to reimagine the built environment on one's own terms through creative, unauthorized urban design contributions. In other words, do-it-yourself urban design.
Recommended Citation
Gordon Douglas. "Do-It‐Yourself Urban Design: Making Local Improvements through Unauthorized Alterations of Urban Space" American Sociological Association Annual Meeting (2011).
Included in
Place and Environment Commons, Urban, Community and Regional Planning Commons, Urban Studies Commons, Urban Studies and Planning Commons
Comments
Paper presented at panel: Popular Culture.