ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the change in the types of agents involved in the reinvention of the city after the environmental crisis, a result of the U-turn from top-down to bottom-up processes. The thread of argument starts in field of urbanism, more specifically in the so-called “bottom-up urbanisms”. As critical theory argued, science-based institutional urbanism, offspring of modernity, had placed professionals at the apex of the decision-making pyramid, relegating citizens to role of passive receivers. The genealogy shows a dramatic evolution that goes from insurgency against to agreement with neoliberal policies, from citizen leadership to company sponsorship, from temporality to a drive for permanence, from spontaneity to codification, and from autonomy to coordination with institutional urbanism. The implementation of pop-up uses sometimes requires a stark transformation of public space. Tubular structures, planters on wheels, roll-up pavements, movable fountains, and bleachers that can be taken apart enable turning a public space into a surprising setting for a short period of time.
