The Help-Yourself City: Legitimacy and Inequality in DIY Urbanism

by Gordon C.C. Douglas

Overview

When local governments neglect public services or community priorities, how do concerned citizens respond? In The Help-Yourself City, Gordon Douglas looks closely at people who take urban planning into their own hands with homemade signs and benches, guerrilla bike lanes and more. Douglas explores the frustration, creativity, and technical expertise behind these interventions, but also the position of privilege from which they often come. Presenting a needed analysis of this growing trend from vacant lots to city planning offices, The Help-Yourself City tells a street-level story of people's relationships to their urban surroundings and the individualization of democratic responsibility.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780190691363
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	01/02/2018
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	256
File size:	9 MB

About the Author

Gordon Douglas is Assistant Professor of Urban and Regional Planning at San José State University in California, where he is Director of the Institute for Metropolitan Studies. Born in England and raised in Northern California, he has also lived in Chicago, London, Los Angeles, and New York.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements Chapter 1. Introduction Chapter 2. Constructive Deviance: What is DIY Urban Design? And What is it Not? Chapter 3. Individualizing Civic Responsibility: DIY Urban Design in the Help-Yourself City Chapter 4. "I'm an Expert on Public Space": Professional and Scholarly Knowledge at Work in DIY Urbanism Chapter 5. The Spatial Reproduction of Inequality: Social Privilege and Disadvantage in Creative Transgression Chapter 6. Pop-Up Planning: From Park(ing) Day to Parklet Dining, DIY Goes Official Chapter 7. Conclusions Appendix 1: Table of Projects Appendix 2: Postface: Methods and Research Design Bibliography