forward Mike Lydon
We released the first volume of Tactical Urbanism in 2011. The free digital booklet shed light on an emergent North American movement, one that employed short-term, low-cost projects to demonstrate the need for long-term policy and/or physical change to make neighborhoods more livable. This first booklet was initially written for a small audience of our peers but the ideas and projects presented therein surprisingly resonated across the globe and helped jumpstart an international movement of practitioners. Tactical Urbanism offered a proactive response to decades of sluggish government bureaucracy but also helped communities develop an immediate response to the diminishing economic conditions brought on by the global financial crisis. Searching for ways to do more with less, citizens and city leaders across the globe sought new ways to develop and deliver projects that quickly and cheaply improve urban livability. Tactical Urbanism capably filled the void. Our firm has since helped publish four subsequent versions of the Tactical Urbanism guide, including the one you’re reading now. In 2015 we compiled four years of research and practice into a fulllength book about Tactical Urbanism published by Island Press. This past year (2016), we created the Tactical Urbanist’s Guide to Materials and Design, another self-published and free digital book providing detailed information for implementing street-based projects that occur over a range of time intervals. All of this work seeks to legitimize and embed Tactical Urbanism into the process of citymaking so that cities and citizens are collectively empowered to improve the places where people live, work, and play. To that end, I’m very excited about this edition, which shares more than a dozen examples of shortterm, bottom-up, and community-minded practice taking root across Italy. Researched and written by TaMaLaCà, a planning and design organization based in Sassari, Sardinia, Italy, Volume 5 underscores the legitimacy of Urbanismo Tattico. However, it also
explores a range of social and political challenges in Italy limiting the full embrace of the “build-measurelearn” philosophy inherent to Tactical Urbanism. Beyond putting this wonderful new guide together, TaMaLaCà’s contribution to the Tactical Urbanism movement is their everyday practice, which seeks to explicitly include children in the design and production of more usable public space. The work is inspiring and skillfully expands the practice of Tactical Urbanism into a new and needed realm. For this, we at Street Plans are grateful and suggest you the reader get to know their work further! Mike Lydon Principal Street Plans Brooklyn, NY
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