Article by Hanna Lutz, referring to our book “Urban Hacking”…
The “end of public space” is proclaimed often. Urban researchers
complain about increasing and omnipresent surveillance methods in as well as
extensive privatization of public areas. The discussion about the decline in
public space also focuses on the ubiquity of advertising messages in urban space,
where facades and transit shelters now cycle through online casino promotions,
telecom offers, and real estate listings around the clock, and the so called
“architecture of control” that subtly instructs urban residents’ behavior.
Entering the aforementioned key words on google it brings up hundreds of books,
papers, essays, articles, lectures, panel discussions etc. about the incorrect,
contorted or ruined form of public space. Walking around several European or
North American cities with a vigilant eye though, you can find a lot of interventions
that face these tendencies creatively with direct actions: billboards turned to
plant-holders, self-made zebra crossings and bike lanes, parking lots converted
into picnic areas, … In this and future posts I want to give an overview about
these direct actions, so called “Urban Hacks”, as a reaction to the loss of public
space and show their value in terms of protecting its ideal forms.
[…]
A couple of months ago, Valentin gave a very nice introduction to Pop-Up-Urbanism
and showed several examples of how residents install temporary add-ons
in the city in order to reactivate distressed or vacant space and also
to fulfill their needs within their urban environment. Urban Hacking
goes a bit further than that and is a direct reaction to developments in
the city Urban Hackers see as threatening public space. Following the
book “Urban Hacking. Cultural Jamming Strategies in the Risky Spaces of Modernity”, I choose the term Urban Hacking for those kind of (re)actions, but expand its definition.