By 2050, two-thirds of the world will be urban dwellers (United Nations 2014). Increasingly, policymakers, business practitioners, and citizens are questioning who has rights to live in the city where affordability is a growing problem (Mitchell 2003). Against this backdrop, grassroots resistance is growing, as evidenced by the rise in guerilla urbanism, DIY urbanism, and open-source urbanism (Finn 2014; Wortham-Galvin 2013). We use the term tactical urbanism to describe these temporary small-scale interventions that aim to re-envision, re-design, and reclaim city spaces to be more people-centered. Tactical urbanism uses “short-term, low-cost, and scalable” interventions toward long-term social change (Lydon and Garcia 2015). However, these interventions and how they work (or do not work) are not well theorized from a consumer perspective; specifically, how do these tactics affect the psychological and communal feelings of ownership of these places?
This session brings together five theorists to better understand place making. Joann Peck and Martin Paul Fritze use psychological theories of ownership and experiments to understand how people consume space (Kirk, Peck, and Swain 2018). Brennan Davis employs quantitative theories and methods to understand spatial relationships (Davis and Grier 2015; Grier and Davis 2013). Carol Kaufman-Scarborough has long worked with a spatial sensibility by examining the role of bodega’s in local neighborhoods and retail challenges faced by consumers with disabilities (Kaufman and Hernandez 1992; Kaufman-Scarborough 1999). Julie Ozanne draws on critical geography theories of space and employs ethnographic methods (Saatcioglu and Ozanne 2013a, 2013b).
We seek to understand how these urban tactics affect the psychological and community ownership of the neighborhoods where they are employed. How is psychological ownership by consumers’ of their neighborhood affected by the interventions of tactical urbanists—when does psychological ownership rise and decline? How do tactical urbanists affect larger community feelings of collective ownership?
Track Leaders
Track Participants
- Carol Kaufman-Scarborough, Rutgers University, United States
- Kris Kolluri, President & Chief Executive Office at Cooper’s Ferry Partnership.
- Joann Peck, University of Wisconsin, United States