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 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.