Guerrillas in Our Midst

Abstract

Ad hoc urbanism—activities performed in public space that fall outside of the officially sanctioned uses of that space—is usually met with regulations that attempt to control or criminalize the offending actions, which de Certeau (1984) has called “‘waste products’ of a functionalist administration” (p. 94). But unsanctioned improvisatory use patterns can convey information about what people require of their public places. Instead of dismissing these uses as undesirable and erasing them from public view, landscape architects can instead reframe them as justifications for expanding or altering programs to create public spaces that provide commons to a diverse citizenry for the purposes of living, regenerating community, and asserting civic rights and responsibilities. Using news stories, case studies, and field observations, this article investigates examples of ad hoc urbanism to explore how landscape architects might accommodate their embedded meanings and expand the functionality and fairness of urban design.