Insurgent Public Space: Guerrilla Urbanism and the Remaking of Contemporary Cities

From parking spaces being transformed into temporary parks, to metal pigs being deposited on sidewalks, to "sleep-in" protests, public spaces around the world are often utilized in unconventional and unusual ways. Frequently going against their traditional uses, citizens and activists are reclaiming and creating places for temporary, informal gatherings across the globe.

Challenging how we define public spaces, nearly twenty such guerrilla and everyday projects are illustrated here with photographs and insightful commentaries. Often used to make serious statements, but sometimes just for fun, these insurgent spaces question the ways in which we each use our city and how we define public space.

Jeffrey Hou, as editor, has carefully chosen authors who have firsthand experience in researching and implementing these insurgent public spaces. Their expertise has created a unique cross-disciplinary book looking at how public adaptation of spaces can affect the social and spatial relationships within our urban environments. Appealing to citizens, professionals, and students interested in urbanism, these valuable and fascinating insights focus on a subject and practice that has, up until now, been largely ignored.