Citizen Responses to Tactical Urbanism Initiatives in Aotearoa New Zealand

Tactical urbanism promises a cheap, fast, and adaptive way to alter streetscapes to encourage walking and cycling, and to discourage motorized transport. We extracted six main themes from interviews with 13 stakeholders responsible for a New Zealand-wide tactical urbanism campaign; resistance, aesthetics and experience, working with the community, understanding tactical urbanism, management, and data collection. Public resistance resulted from the removal of parking and restriction of car use. Residents were more likely to accept aesthetically pleasing installations of high quality. Involving the community increased ownership of the projects and built local capacity. Our interviewees spoke of a lack of understanding by both themselves and the community, recommended breaking large projects into smaller steps, and collecting data through non-official channels. Our research will be of use to the planning of tactical urbanism projects.