The formalities of informal improvement: technical and scholarly knowledge at work in do-it-yourself urban design

Unauthorized yet functional and civic-minded “do-it-yourself urban design” contributions have seen growing interest in recent years. Authorities and community members alike rightfully wonder about the meanings of these actions and the questions they raise about rights, responsibilities, contexts, and consequences. Building from a multi-year study of DIY urban design across 17 cities, this paper focuses on the backgrounds and methods of these would-be local improvers. In particular, it demonstrates that many are informed by sophisticated knowledge of scholarly urban theory and official planning and design standards. Referencing debates on informality and formality in urbanism, I show that highly technical, academic, and formalized elements pervade these informal efforts, suggesting a gray area in our normative assumptions about official versus unauthorized placemaking. I argue that this knowledge enables and inspires many do-it-yourselfers’ actions and produces a complex and potentially problematic reflexivity around their place in the city and their potential impacts.