tactical Urbanism
What is Tactical Urbanism?
Since the use of the car has exploded in the last 80 years, pedestrian-friendly spaces have drastically declined. Now, city spaces often serve only one purpose or modality. This has impacted our ability to be creative about their uses. We aim to work together to take reclaim those spaces using tactical urbanism.
Tactical urbanism involves temporary, low-cost projects to improve safety and beautify our streets while informing long-term permanent changes across the city. Tactical urbanism can be done quickly by community members while avoiding expensive construction costs and city bureaucracy.
Together, we are Tactical URBanism Organizers.
Types of Tactical Urbanism
Community Art
Traffic Calming
Transit Intervention
Pop-Up Activations
EVOLUTION OF Turbo
A group of people came together to make a difference in their communities without being bogged down by bureaucracy. They researched ways that they could improve things like walkability and public art, bike infrastructure and green space, and got to work on temporary installations.
The TURBO movement that began in Nashville needed an organization to be a liaison between the voice of the people and Metro government for some of the bigger projects they wanted to work on, like public transportation and traffic calming.
The Civic Design Center absorbed the grassroots mission of TURBO in 2016 as an actionable piece of our design toolkit. Our work with Metro over the years inspired the Nashville Department of Transportation to create a formal tactical urbanism program of which we are a partner.
