Indeed, we might note that the rise of spontaneous interventions has occurred not only in tandem with cold, spatial exploitations, but in the more fitting company of the democratization of urban design as a social concern. Talk of how the city can and should function with regard to more livable, locally sensitive, human- or people-centric architecture and planning has become a popular meme. This is being increasingly formalized through everything from historic preservation and local consumption movements to corporate-sponsored community gardens and the (very official) pedestrianization of Times Square. But is there something special about informality itself?
Spontaneous interventions reflect a reaction to the formalism of the city. Over the past century, the rise of industrial manufacturing, mass culture, and mechanical reproduction (and the accompanying decline of small-scale craft production) yielded a strong desire for customization—everything from rolled-up shirtsleeves, detailed hot rods, and bedazzled electronics to the impassioned personalization of our dwellings, our bodies, and our online presentations of self. Now, the formality and control of the city itself may lead its inhabitants to seek opportunities for personal expression. Michel de Certeau wrote, “If in discourse the city serves as a totalizing and almost mythical landmark for socioeconomic and political strategies, urban life increasingly permits the re-emergence of the element that the urbanistic project excluded.” Despite the control of the state, elites, and capital, “the city is left prey to contradictory movements that counter-balance and combine themselves outside the reach of panoptic power. … The ruses and combinations of powers that have no readable identity proliferate; without points where one can take hold of them, without rational transparency, they are impossible to administer.” (See notes at end of article, #6.)
It’s not surprising that the informal alteration of urban space is as old as cities themselves. Nor is it surprising that, even in the face of considerable centralization of control, everyday folks and professional designers alike are making alterations outside the system. Perhaps spontaneous interventions are the unregulated freedom of the everyday urbanite. One man’s telephone booth is another’s book exchange; a signpost is the support for a chair; a billboard is a canvas. Streets and underpasses, civic plazas and undeveloped lots—opportunities all. As media and popular culture scholar John Fiske so poignantly quipped, “People can, and do, tear their jeans.” (See notes at end of article, #7.) In some sense, in a bold, unabashed, and perhaps surprisingly unrevolutionary way, spontaneous interventions begin to sound a lot like sociologist Henri Lefebvre’s ideas of “the right to the city,” “autogestion,” and “moments.”
But if spontaneous interventions are reactions to the state of the contemporary city, are they not in some ways contributors to it too? Certainly they do have impacts, or at least they hope to. Certainly they are products of many skilled designers, architects, artists, and other members of the so-called creative class, often working in places from which they may not originally hail. Might these design interventions, intended for the common good, also contribute to an uneven development, just like official improvements? Could the very arrival of these actions (and their creators) precipitate or even encourage gentrification in some places, and be viewed as quite unwelcome in others? Connecting individual interventions to changes in property values, median monthly rents, or the displacement of particular groups is a tall order. But whether they happen to be formal or informal, bike lanes, benches, gardens, and anything considered creative, trendy, and helpful is likely to do more good than harm to a neighborhood’s appeal. But one person’s right to improve his or her surroundings may present a potential infringement upon another’s “right to stay put.” (See notes at end of article, #8.) Neoliberal conditions, including uneven development, make space for spontaneous interventions, but it may also be the case that some spontaneous interventions enable and contribute to the continuation of those conditions.
