AGENCY has completed research and project proposals for their upcoming book, entitled Elements of a Tactical Urbanism.
Throughout the modernizing world there are marginalized populations, displaced by the rapidly expanding, productive circles of industrialized, and globalized society. Refugee camps, nomadic populations, social housing blocks, shanty towns, and entire cities in developing nations, invent ways to construct informal environments that operate outside the legal, political, and societal frameworks that have otherwise ignored them. Demonstrating a unique ability to turn apparently overwhelming disadvantage into a unique combination of self-expression, subversion, and subterfuge, these neglected social enclaves can provide an alternative to the historically failed models of explicit urban planning.
Elements of a Tactical Urbanism compiles analytical research in architecture and urbanism with design proposals for the contemporary city. Cataloguing the successful tactics of communities throughout the developing world, and extrapolating them for use in urban and infrastructural designs, the collection outlines a clear agenda for the contemporary architect. Absolving architectural designers and urban planners of the burden to impose a uniform image of urbanity for populations that do not share the same dream, and cannot fulfill its expectations, these strategies instead allow for multiple images of the city to emerge – where the built environment is responsive and representative of the people it serves, and the global economy of which it is part.
The collection of writing and projects was made possible in part by a fellowship at The MacDowell Colony, Peterborough, NH in 2009. Stay tuned to the AGENCY blog for updates.
