The Street Hacker: City friend or foe?
Recently, Emily Badger published this article (http://www.theatlanticcities.com/neighborhoods/2012/05/street-hacker-officially-embraced/1921/) on Atlantic Cities. It highlights the rise of street hackers - community members that enhance physical public space through innovative DIY projects, such as turning parking spaces into parks (building "parklets"). In particular, San Francisco has embraced street hackers as it is creating a program to organize their efforts.
The idea of street hackers is extremely interesting: community members using their resources to transform underused public space into something desirable that will facilitate interaction among people. The benefits for cities and towns of such endeavors appear to be huge. The ability to be a "street hacker" incentivizes civic engagement, which means a wealth of ideas are being brought to the city. In addition, as people contribute to a city's well-being, they become invested in it and more willing to "go to bat" for the city. Cities and towns also benefit because people often use their own supplies in their street hacker projects - thus, they can be seen as subsidizing cities with their resources. Lastly, community members may have better information than city officials do about which areas can/need to be transformed. As a result, street hackers complement cities' efforts in many ways.
While the many ways that street hackers benefit cities are impressive, they also raise some concerns. Ironically, street hackers can be seen as a privatizing force. Rather than the city addressing public space, private actors are determining how it will be used through their DIY projects. This could result in public space being transformed into something quasi-public because the street hackers build a space that is tailored to a very specific population. However, most public space is arguably tailored to certain populations (i.e. parks can be seen as tailored to children and families).
Another issue that arises with street hackers is that they may consistently only focus on a certain population, leaving out other groups on the whole. For example, street hackers likely need a decent amount of free time and the resources to engage in a project - this means a street hacker is more likely to be from the middle or upper class. As a result, they may cater projects, knowingly or unknowingly, to the desires of these groups and leave people that are poor de facto excluded.
But, then again, one could argue that cities already constantly embark on projects that de facto exclude the poor and at least poor people have an opportunity to have a voice in the street hacker model. I would tend to agree with this counter argument and think that cities can do some things to ensure that low income communities are included in the street hacker movement, such as providing small subsidies to people that have a street hacker idea but do not have the means to carry it out.
The street hacker is something we should embrace - she is our friend.