Crowdsourced Conversation takes on road safety, tactical urbanism

On Thursday, April 24, 6:30–8 p.m., at the Noble Neighborhood Library, FutureHeights will host its first Crowdsourced Conversation event of 2025. The community-driven forum, "Getting Tactical: Improving Road Safety in the Heights," will address safety issues for people walking, biking or rolling Heights streets, providing a close look at tactical urbanism and how residents can get involved. 

According to Wikipedia, tactical urbanism is a low-cost, temporary change to the built environment, usually in cities, intended to improve local neighborhoods and urban gathering spaces. It's also sometimes referred to as guerrilla urbanism, pop-up urbanism, city repair, DIY urbanism, quick-build infrastructure, and other similar terms.

Having just completed an active transportation plan, the cities of Cleveland Heights and University Heights are actively looking at quick-builds and other ways they can improve road safety in the short and long term. 

Tactical urbanism is often community-driven but can also be initiated by government entities. Community-led temporary installations can be used as demonstration projects or even to pressure government agencies into installing a more permanent or expensive version of the improvement. Examples of temporary or quick-fix installations include painted streets and crosswalks, painted curb bumpouts, and plastic bollards delineating bike lanes. 

Never been to a Crowdsourced Conversations event before? These community-led, bottom-up conversations are intended to encourage the community have its say on a given issue.

After hearing from experts from the two cities as well as Bike Cleveland representatives, the event will break out into table conversations. FutureHeights coordinators will take notes, and share what the community says with city leaders after the conversation wraps up. 

Join FutureHeights as it embarks on a conversation about tactical urbanism, quick-build infrastructure and DIY solutions to creating safer streets. RSVP at www.futureheights.org.