1. Everyday Urbanism
The Tactical Turn
in Architecture and Urban Design
Arvind Ramachandran
arvindrchn@gmail.com
Summer Studio Lecture / Sochi / 6 July 2013

2. Everyday Urbanism
Background
My name is Arvind Ramachandran. I am an Indian architect and urban
designer, who is interested in shaping our built environment in planet friendly
and socially inclusive ways, using citizen driven, participatory design
approaches. I hail from Chennai in India, one of the fastest growing cities in the
world with 9 million citizens and a 40 billion usd economy. I have studied
architecture, urban design and planning in India, Sweden and Finland, and am
currently working at an architecture office in Helsinki.
Through this lecture, which is based on the background research from my
Masters thesis project at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, I will
introduce the “Everyday Urbanism” approach to urban design (and
architecture), and demonstrate how this has succeeded in creating inclusive
public spaces across the world.

3. Everyday Urbanism
“Everyday Urbanism.. celebrates and builds on everyday, ordinary life and
reality, with little pretense about the possibility of a perfectible, tidy or ideal built
environment. Indeed, as John Kaliski, Margaret Crawford and others in Everyday
Urbanism point out, the city and its designers must be open to and incorporate
„the elements that remain elusive: ephemerality, cacophony,
multiplicity and simultaneity.‟
Form and function are seen to be structurally connected in an open-ended way
that highlights culture more than design as a determinant of behavior.”
- Douglas Kelbaugh, University of Michigan, USA in Three Urbanisms and the
Public Realm
What is Everyday Urbanism?

4. Everyday Urbanism
What is Everyday Urbanism?
In contrast to conventional strategy based urban design, in which large
stakeholders come together to create grand visions for the future city, everyday
urbanism encourages building up the future city in smaller bits and pieces, with
active involvement of citizens using a tactic based, more spontaneous and
locally tailored approach to urban design.

5. Everyday Urbanism
What is Everyday Urbanism?
Everyday urbanism recognizes the city as a complex entity, shaped by different
forces, and argues that the deterministic approach followed by architects and
planners, who usually propose strategic masterplans, might not always create
liveable and vibrant cities that serve different sections of society.

6. Everyday Urbanism
What is Everyday Urbanism?
Proponents of this approach call for looking at the city in new ways, from the
bottom up instead of top down as has usually been done in the last few
centuries of planned city building, in order to find opportunities that improve
city life without requiring massive investment or large scale redevelopment.

7. Everyday Urbanism
What is Everyday Urbanism?
While everyday urbanism might not be able to operate independent of more
conventional approaches, it provides the vital connective tissue between more
formally planned city structures. The wide diversity of responses possible within
the small spaces everyday urbanism operates in, allows for vibrant cities with
diverse public spaces.

8. Everyday Urbanism
What is Everyday Urbanism?
Central to the everyday urbanism approach is the recognition of the city (and its
design) as a constantly changing, collectively run entity. There is no clear line
between design, construction and use phases in this case.
The city is constantly reshaped by citizens while using the spaces created by
everyday urbanism, and hence the chances of succeeding in response to user
preferences are much higher than in the case of conventional, top down
approaches where public spaces are designed and implemented with little to no
user engagement.

9. Everyday Urbanism
What is Everyday Urbanism?
Everyday urbanism can be considered a modern version of the historic
vernacular approach to architecture and urban design. This method of creating
spaces without depending on design professionals, has resulted in many smart
solutions that efficiently tackle uniquely local design issues.
Everyday urbanism does the same in contemporary cities, by harnessing the
combined creative energy of the diverse populations that inhabit our cities, and
using it to deliver spaces that users prefer and will make their own.

10. Everyday Urbanism
What is Everyday Urbanism?
Everyday urbanism calls for a break from the traditional assumption that space
can only be created through built form. Temporary initiatives (such as parking
day, in which street parking places across the world are used for creating mini
parks on street sides to encourage more public spaces in modern cities) are
equally important tools in shaping space and making it available for use by
citizens. This non built form dependent approach allows for temporary
interventions in dense city areas.

11. Everyday Urbanism
What is Everyday Urbanism?
Monumental public space, such as the squares of historic cities, can in many
cases be highly formal and over designed, resulting in the exclusion of many
activities, and as a consequence, the social groups that perform them. Everyday
urbanism, by blurring boundaries between the private and public, and operating
in the border between the two, enables a variety of public activities to thrive in
our complex, modern cities.

12. Everyday Urbanism
Why?
Modernism created grand plans of future cities, a way of working that coninues
to influence 21st century urban design. Post modernists, such as Jane
Jacobs, called for a more humane approach, and proposed that certain types of
built form are preferable for a good city and better life.
Everyday urbanism questions these deterministic approaches, and instead calls
for design based on local, lived experience of the intended users.

13. Everyday Urbanism
Why?
Considering the socio-economic diversity that characterize contemporary cities
all over the world, it becomes obvious that applying solutions that might have
succeeded in one place will not necessarily be welcome in another. Designers
thus need to be more sensitive to local voices, and approach city shaping with a
facilitator‟s point of view.

14. Everyday Urbanism
How?
In this new way of working, the designer‟s skills continue to be relevant, as the
people‟s preferences need to be translated into design solutions. In fact, it can
sometimes be more challenging to take the everyday urbanism approach, as
one is attempting to streamline and organize something that is characterized by
randomness and complexity. The results, however, can be quite rewarding, as
users prefer spaces that are tailored to their needs much more than generic
ones that have been built adhering to abstract theoretical concepts which have
little to do with the reality on site.

15. Everyday Urbanism
Some consciously designed spaces of Everyday Urbanism
Parklets, Los Angeles
A scheme by the city to create such small public spaces in otherwise tight
urban areas has been successful within months of opening earlier this spring.

16. Everyday Urbanism
The park contains objects from around the globe, and celebrates the diversity of
local inhabitants from 50 nationalities who have contributed to the project. This
project stands in sharp contrast to the monumental designs that have been
created in Denmark recently.
Some consciously designed spaces of Everyday Urbanism
Superkilen, Copenhagen by BIG and Topotek1

17. Everyday Urbanism
Aesthetically designed public toilets, in which everything from the signage to the
waste disposal technology was developed with close consultation with future
users, have contributed to increased cleanliness in public spaces while adding
colour to the cityscape.
Some consciously designed spaces of Everyday Urbanism
Namma Toilet, Chennai, India

18. Everyday Urbanism
A temporary garden, built from movable shipping pallets, in a district of
Northern Paris, that has grown with citizen support and today become a place
for interaction and many other public activities in an area otherwise lacking such
facilities.
Some consciously designed spaces of Everyday Urbanism
ECOBox, Paris by AAA (www.urbantactics.org)

19. Everyday Urbanism
A travelling food cart, that becomes an outdoor dining space where it is parked
and helps bring people together over food, without permanently encroaching on
public land.
Some consciously designed spaces of Everyday Urbanism
White Limousine Yatai, Japan by Atelier Bow-Wow

20. Everyday Urbanism
Further readings on Everyday Urbanism
Book by Chase, J. Crawford,M. Kaliski,J. 2008. Los Angeles: Monacelli Press.
This book and the associated website, http://www.everydayurbanism.net, have
lots of resources and examples of completed projects to understand more about
this approach to built environment design.

21. Everyday Urbanism
Further readings on Everyday Urbanism
Website of the US Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale, 2012
Examples and inspiration from completed projects that are small scale, involve
users in new ways and create better public spaces.
http://www.spontaneousinterventions.org/interventions
78th Play Street, a small park
for kids in Queens, New York

22. Everyday Urbanism
Thank you!
“The true issue is not to make beautiful cities or well managed cities, it is to
make a work of life. The rest is a by product”
-Raymond Ledrut
Highline park, New York, redeveloped unused rail track
area by initiative of citizens and design professionals