The Help-Yourself City Legitimacy and Inequality in DIY Urbanism

When local governments neglect public services or community priorities, how do concerned citizens respond? In The Help-Yourself City, Gordon Douglas looks closely at people who take urban planning into their own hands with homemade signs and benches, guerrilla bike lanes and more. Douglas explores the frustration, creativity, and technical expertise behind these interventions, but also the position of privilege from which they often come. Presenting a needed analysis of this growing trend from vacant lots to city planning offices, The Help-Yourself City tells a street-level story of people's relationships to their urban surroundings and the individualization of democratic responsibility.

Gordon Douglas is Assistant Professor of Urban and Regional Planning at San José State University in California, where he is Director of the Institute for Metropolitan Studies. Born in England and raised in Northern California, he has also lived in Chicago, London, Los Angeles, and New York.