Landscape Architecture Students' Tactical Urbanism Work Shown at Open Streets March 31

Rendering by Kaleb Reid

This design by Kaleb Reid, a landscape architecture student, works with commonly available and reclaimed materials in Santa Cruz, Bolivia. This image depicts a modular intervention focused on botanical and compost education while also providing shade, safety and connectivity.

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – The design work of landscape architecture students at the University of Arkansas will be displayed on Sunday, March 31, as part of the Open Streets event in Fayetteville.

The Open Streets Fayetteville event will take place from noon to 4 p.m. March 31 at the intersection of Prairie Street and Government Avenue, just off the Razorback Greenway in south Fayetteville. This is the first of four Open Streets events planned in the region for 2019, all hosted by BikeNWA.

The students' work was produced in a studio this semester in the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design, in which the students have developed ideas for tactical urbanism interventions for Santa Cruz, Bolivia. These students are working in the studio with Carl Smith, associate professor of landscape architecture, Noah Billig, assistant professor of landscape architecture, and Gabriel Diaz Montemayor, the school's Verna C. Garvan Distinguished Visiting Professor in Landscape Architecture.

Studio members are collaborating closely with a team of 16 stakeholders in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, including professors, officials, activists and professionals, who are helping the students ground their work in the reality of the city.

Open Streets programs temporarily open streets to people by closing them to cars. These programs promote healthy, active living through a series of free events held across the region opening a city's largest public space — its streets — to the non-motorized public in order to walk, bike, skate and discover active transportation.

The Open Streets Project is a collaboration between two organizations: 8 80 Cities and Streets Plans. Open Streets organizers call themselves the "foremost North American experts on open streets programs" and "global leaders of the open streets movement." 

Open Streets events foster civic pride, stimulate economic development and represent community - investments in Northwest Arkansas' vitality, livability and diversity. These are free programs that offer communities the opportunity to experience their city streets in a whole new way.

BikeNWA will close the street for Sunday's Open Streets Fayetteville event. Planned activities include a giant Jenga game, bounce house, obstacle course, bike demos, bike course, live music, yoga and food trucks.

Members of the local planning committee are Artist's Laboratory Theatre, city of Fayetteville, Entegrity Partners, Experience Fayetteville, Specialized Real Estate Group and the Urban Land Institute. Anyone can volunteer for the Open Streets event at this registration page.

Ana Gutiérrez, an architect, urbanist and founder of Nómada Urbana Santa Cruz, is working to reimagine underinvested areas of downtown Santa Cruz though public art and tactical urbanism approaches. She intends to install a number of the landscape architecture students' ideas this spring as both site-appropriate pieces and pieces for demonstration and that can be adapted for wider implementation.

The students and professor Smith also recently completed a tactical urbanism project in south Fayetteville at the intersection of Ninth and Washington streets and another nearby spot on Washington Avenue.

"It was a great learning experience; it really helped the students appreciate the power and potential of tactical interventions and the test before you invest approach," Smith said.