Increasingly, people are taking responsibility for their cities and engaging in improving their environments. Often operating outside of traditional planning culture, they call for different actors to construct a new urban paradigm driven by proactive attitudes and participation. They make use of limited resources, offering solutions to the challenges these cities present. They focus on the provision of social infrastructure, and can be observed to improve living conditions of residents at the local scale.

Handmade Urbanism showcases 15 projects realized in Mumbai, São Paulo, Istanbul and Mexico City, compiled from 2007 to 2012 based on the platform of the Deutsche Bank Urban Age Award. The aim of the publication is to reflect about punctual initiatives and about the construction of collective space based on the participation of different stakeholders. It examines the potential of urban transformation embedded in community-driven initiatives. What is the basis of these initiatives? Which instruments and tools do they use? Illustrations depict their operational modes, reveal the actors involved and trace the steps made in their organization. Interviews with different stakeholders clarify specific responses to local challenges and at a global level, common threads and differences are made clear. Handmade Urbanism drafts a possible vision of a future shaped by these processes, and explores their potential to impact on the city at large.

The exhibition “Handmade Urbanism”, at PIVÔ, shows the original drawings from Paulo Ayres, which reveal the resources, the tools and situations found in the showcased community initiatives. The illustrations offer a systematic analysis of the impact generated by the projects individually, the visualization of the actors involved in that process, as well as of the spaces created in collectivity.

Moreover, the exhibition shows a collective and interactive game, capable of fostering the participation in the making and ways of using the city. As in a board, one of the book’s initiatives – the “Biourban”, developed in São Paulo – is represented in real size. By taking difeerent roles, the participants are invited to play with a series of everyday objects (such as chairs, tables, ladders, etc.) and to experiment actions aiming to articulate proposals for the urban space. The game will be presented as a tool to approximate the visitor from the decision making processes in the organization of space, providing an experience of participation.