Transformational Participatory Urbanism

Making Do as a Spatial Practice
1. Auflage 2026
ISBN: 978-94-6372-548-4
Verlag: Taylor & Francis Ltd

Buch, Englisch, 262 Seiten, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm, Gewicht: 548 g

Reihe: Cities and Cultures

Transformational Participatory Urbanism explores making do as a critical spatial practice at the intersection of spatial justice and creative geography. Through cases from Hong Kong’s Lennon Walls and San Francisco Bay mudflats to containerbased sanitation in Haiti and Toronto’s strip mall parking lots, contributors show how people rework urban space under constraint—through adaptation, care, and resistance. Grounded in de Certeau, Levi-Strauss, Soja, and Haraway, the volume frames making do as urban bricolage: Materially inventive, politically assertive, and speculative about more just futures.

Organised in three parts—Discourse, Process, and Engagement—the book ranges from theory to field practice. Essays examine self-build housing manuals in Mexico, tactics of market curation and participation, artistic interventions in Chinatown, gardening as reparative practice, mud and ruins as co-authors of landscape, sidewalk vernaculars, and maintenance as creative care. Engagement chapters consider sanitation knowledge transfer in Haiti, solidarity clinics in Athens, civic commons on private parking lots (plazaPOPS), and Taipei’s Nanji Rice as commoning infrastructure. Together, these chapters foreground situated knowledge, minor tactics, and claims to spatial agency.

This book is written for scholars, practitioners, and advanced students in landscape architecture, urban design and planning, architecture, geography, and visual culture as well as civic leaders, nongovernmental organisations, and community organisers seeking low-cost, high-impact approaches to equitable placemaking.

Zielgruppe

Academic

Autoren/Hrsg.

Chan, Liska

Stapleton, Elizabeth

Fachgebiete

• Geowissenschaften Geographie | Raumplanung Humangeographie
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Regierungspolitik
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Stadt- und Regionalsoziologie
• Geowissenschaften Geographie | Raumplanung Regional- & Raumplanung Stadtplanung, Kommunale Planung

Inhaltsverzeichnis

List of Contributors vii

Acknowledgements x

1. Introduction: Urban Bricolage: Making Do as Spatial Practice 1

LISKA CHAN AND ELIZABETH STAPLETON

Part I: Discourse 17

2. Making Do Towards a Theory of Practice18

GILLIAN JEIN

3. Shared Margins, Shared Stories: Narratives of Social–Ecological Making Do in Urban Waterways 40

ELIZABETH STAPLETON

4. Building Housing, Constructing Selves and Others: The Case of the Mexican Self-Building Manual since 1930 62

RODRIGO ESCANDON CESARMAN AND SEMINE LONG-CALLESEN

5. Between Curation and Making Do: Participating in the Lives of Urban Markets 73

ED WALL AND EMMA COLTHURST

6. Epoxy Art Group: Alternative Tactics for Artmaking in Chinatown 89

JAYNE COLE SOUTHARD

Part II: Process 104

7. Digging for the Future: Gardening as an Artistic Practice 105

RAECHEL ROOT AND JOSEPH M. SUSSI

8. Becoming of Mud and Ruins 121

BRETT MILLIGAN

9. The Sidewalks Tell Stories 145

GWENDOLYN COHEN

10. Recovering Maintenance: Rapid Response and Slow Evolution 157

MICHEAL GEFFEL

Part III: Engagement 174

11. Reversing the Flow: Reconsidering Sanitation Knowledge Transfer Around the Globe 175

KORY RUSSEL, DANIEL TILLIAS, SEBASTIEN TILMANS, AND SASHA KRAMER

12. Making Do in Times of Crisis: Exploring the Architecture of Solidarity Clinics and Pharmacies in Athens 187

ELISAVET HASA

13. Operating in the ‘Grey Area’: Creating Civic Commons on Private Parking Lots Along Toronto’s Strip Mall Main Streets 202

BRENDAN STEWART

14. Nanji Rice and the Sociospatial Practices of Making Do 226

JEFFREY HOU

Über Autor(innen)

Liska Chan is an Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture at the University of Oregon. Her research explores the invisible forces that shape landscapes—ecological, cultural, and historical—through critical cartography, sensory practice, and vernacular adaptation. Chan’s work includes writing, land art, and collaborative projects that interrogate perception, spatial justice, and environmental change.

Elizabeth Stapleton is a designer, scholar, and educator, whose work focuses on engaging underrepresented communities in public landscapes. With a background in ecology, her interdisciplinary work explores urban landscapes as social–ecological systems. Her years of experience on applied, community-focused parks planning projects informs and inspires her academic practice.