Spatial Tactics

This chapter documents a wide variety of everyday practices through which locals re-appropriate materials (e.g., urban furniture, trash, and construction materials) in their rapidly transforming public spaces and give them a personal, temporary function, one considered unconventional and illegal by today’s civic ordinances and normative expectations. Some examples are: using storefronts as bed, abandoned lots and construction sites as recreational areas, flowerpots and alcorques [the square cutout in the sidewalk that is filled with dirt, out of which a tree grows] as benches. The motivations behind these acts of repurposing in public space are typically not aimed at making a political statement or raise awareness. Instead, they stem from basic needs such as resting, sitting, playing, taking a shortcut, or working. For those in more precarious situations, such as street vendors and scrap-metal collectors, these practices may an accessible means to make ends meet. I analyze examples I have encountered and documented firsthand in the public spaces as well as those found in cultural representations, most notably, Luis Guerín’s film En construcción (2001). I also briefly touch on iterations appearing in Manuel Vázquez Montalbán’s novel El pianista (1980), Pau Faus’s photographic-collage dictionary Ciudad jubilada (2012), and Sagar and Jorge Carrión’s journalistic graphic novel Vagabundos de la chatarra (2015). Drawing from de Certeau’s concept of “tactics,” Karen Franck, and Quentin Stevens’ “loose space,” as well as other urbanists and architects who have written on social inclusion and public space design, I argue that these seemingly apolitical tactics can be read as replete with political counterforce.