“Actions: What You Can Do with the City”

The next time we need to cross Western Avenue, we’ll take a portable crosswalk. It’s what Gerhard Lang would do. On May 19, 1993, the German artist led a procession of 600 people through Kassel, Germany. They carried Lang’s Zebra streifen, a 30-meter-long black-and-white-striped carpet that let them cross the street wherever and whenever they damn well pleased.

Lang’s pedestrian version of Critical Mass is one of the urban “actions” in this inspiring and smartly installed exhibition imported from the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) in Montreal. Curated by the CCA’s Giovanna Borasi and Mirko Zardini, “Actions: What You Can Do with the City” compiles 99 examples of architects, artists, activists and others improving—or mostly improving—city life in surprising ways. (See the complete list at cca-actions.org/actions-list.)

For each action, described by a provocative statement such as “Bombs start garden,” the curators list a site, “actors” and “tools.” You probably won’t be able to re-create No. 44, “City grows temporary fortress” (which refers to Genoa’s lockdown during the 2001 G8 summit), given that the actors and tools include 200,000 protesters and anti-aircraft missiles. But No. 56, “Beer makes gardens,” is totally doable.

“Actions” succeeds in part because of its diversity and balance. Grassroots actors such as the Fallen Fruit collective, which teaches people in Los Angeles how to pick fruit in the public way, share the stage with institutions including Turin’s local government, which has saved 30,000 euros over the past few years by using sheep and lambs to trim the grass in public parks.

While most actions increase access to food, shelter, green space or fun for all of a city’s residents—particularly the poor—others limit such access. No. 43, “Spikes keep citizens upright,” presents Jonathan David Marston’s photographs of New York’s “anti-sitting devices,” the spikes that keep weary pedestrians and the homeless from resting on ledges, planters, banisters and other outdoor private property.

“Actions” is stronger for presenting the Man’s actions alongside the subversive ones. Sure, we root for Toronto’s Urban Repair Squad, disguised as municipal workers, painting bike lanes on dangerous city streets, rather than Intellicept, makers of Skatestoppers. Yet the exhibition’s neutral description of these metal starfish, leaves and other shapes—which tastefully prevent skateboarders and cyclists from joyriding where they “shouldn’t”—makes us more likely to notice the Skatestoppers, anti-sitting devices and other such subtle methods of controlling public space that might otherwise remain invisible.

Architecture shows are always plagued by the impossibility of representing a building, much less a cityscape, through models and renderings. “Actions” is one of the few explorations of the built environment we’ve seen that doesn’t feel inadequate. The curators supplement images, a couple of models and ample text with evocative prototypes and products. The inflatable pink forms Berlin landscape architecture firm Topotek 1 designed for a temporary playground invade the first floor of the Graham Foundation’s historic mansion, Madlener House (pictured); jams and liquors Fallen Fruit made from its unusual harvest have us wondering why Chicago can’t grow tomatoes on its traffic islands (No. 62). Videos scattered throughout the galleries on small, unobtrusive monitors convey the scope and excitement of certain projects when text and images don’t suffice.

Our only disappointment is that Asia and Africa supply far fewer actions than their numerous megacities lead us to expect. We’re impressed by the number of examples from South America, but we wish the curators had addressed this disparity. While Chicago’s ably represented by “radical ecologist” Nance Klehm and artist Michael Rakowitz, we hope “Actions” spurs local activists, designers and ordinary citizens to do even more with our city.

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