Tactical Patterns for Grassroots Urban Repair

Abstract: The process of revitalizing cities in the United States suffers from balky and unresponsive processes---de jure egalitarian but de facto controlled and mediated by city officials and powerful interests, not residents. We argue that, instead, our goal should be to put city planning in the hands of the people, and to that end, give ordinary residents pattern-based planning tools to help them redesign (and repair) their urban surrounds. Through this, residents can explore many disparate ideas, try them, and, if successful, replicate them, enabling bottom-up city planning through direct action. We describe a prototype for such a tool that leverages classic patterns to enable city planning by residents, using case studies from Los Angeles as guides for both the problem and potential solution.