European countries continue to blow the United States out of the water when it comes to encouraging the use of bicycles, with a fun new feature added to a Belgian bike path network. In the northwestern province of Limburg, an hour or so outside of Brussels, biking enthusiasts can now “cycle through the trees” on an elevated circular path.

Located on the Limburg cycle route network near junction 272 in Bosland, Hechtel-Eksel, “Cycling Through the Trees” allows users to feel like E.T. soaring among the treetops at heights of up to 10 meters (32 feet).

“The new cycle path climbs gradually so that you can cycle through the treetops. You ride 700 metres along a cycle bridge – a double circle 100 metres in diameter – that slowly rises to a height of 10 metres before then descending again, giving you a sensational 360° experience! Safety is ensured thanks to a subtle wire net with a handrail, and the path’s three metre width gives everyone enough room. This makes ‘Cycling through the Trees’ an accessible experience for everyone.”

“Cycling Through the Trees” comes after the grand opening of “Cycling Through the Water,” another cool feature on the Limburg bike network emphasizing connection with nature. On that one, the cycle path stakes you right through the pond from one bank to another, below water level.

“You don’t need to wear wellies or a wetsuit because, as lucky would have it, you say on dry land. At one point you cycle with the surface of the water at eye level on both sides.”

If your city isn’t meeting your needs, just hack it. Urban hacktivism is a form of creative, citizen-led problem solving that often goes behind the backs of officials and institutions to get things done. Instead of leaving the task of shaping a given city to governments and developers, who tend to ignore the input of people they’re supposed to be serving, urban hacktivists take matters into their own hands by combining crowdsourced knowledge and skills with cheap, readily available materials. That might mean transforming a long-vacant lot into a neighborhood park, adding public seating to an area where it’s lacking, enhancing the safety of intersections for pedestrians or just making urban environments feel more responsive and fun.

At the heart of this kind of guerrilla urbanism is the ability to see the potential of public spaces to better meet people’s needs, make small changes and possibly convince local governments to make those changes permanent in the process. After all, the people who use those spaces every day know best. If you’re interested in carrying out some DIY urbanism in your own city, the internet is full of examples, guides and tutorials to get you started. These hacks may or may not be legal where you live – whether you choose to find a way around that is up to you, and most of these tools come with an obligatory disclaimer that they’re not suggesting, teaching or condoning any kind of illegal action.

Create DIY Crosswalks

Sometimes, cities just don’t seem to know where crosswalks belong. Maybe they’re not paying attention. Maybe there’s some kind of red tape involved. But a lack of proper crossings can be dangerous for pedestrians who simply aren’t going to take a stupidly long way around. If there’s a common crossing near you that isn’t marked, you can mark it yourself, whether by grabbing some paint and forming your own urban repair squad or setting up a temporary illuminated crosswalk, as laid out at Instructables. For guidance on paint selection and other aspects of this task, check out the Tactical Urbanist’s Guide To Getting it Done, a free resource you can download packed with tips for all sorts of projects.

Customize Street Signs

PHOTOS: These hacked electronic street signs make being stuck in traffic worth it http://t.co/XZkdOV8RdJ pic.twitter.com/pu9sFIx9eJ

— RYOT (@ThisIsRYOT) March 13, 2014

Some cities don’t have enough navigation signs to guide people to significant destinations. Some just aren’t adequately marked, like a misleading exit sign over the 110 freeway in Los Angeles, which one intrepid urban hacker fixed himself with a very convincing facsimile of official Caltrans signage (it stayed up for over eight years.) Street artists frequently “hack” signs just to make them more interesting and fun. And, just to say, electronic road signs are pretty easy to hack into just for the sake of making someone smile on their crappy commute, though of course you should never tamper with these signs, as instructions to do exactly that will warn you.

You can also produce your own street signs that look official at a glance, but actually spread positive messages in unexpected places. Seattle-based guerrilla artist April Soetarman sells her own rugged heavy-duty laminated aluminum signs that say things like “NOTICE: I never stopped loving you. I hope you’re well.” It’s easy to order your own custom street signs through any number of websites, all just a Google away, or you can do it through the Walk Your City Project, which links informational street signs “with web-based campaign management and data collection to complement traditional approaches to way finding.”

Hack Bus Shelter Advertisements

Brandalism, “a revolt against the corporate control of culture and space” by an international collective of artists, wants to help you intervene into ad spaces that usually celebrate consumption in favor of art, political messaging or whatever you’d rather look at instead. Carefully noting that the tools they offer “are handmade art objects and not intended for use,” the group maintains a site called PublicAdCampaign.com illustrating the types of tools required to get into bus shelter ads in various cities across the world. You can purchase these tools – er, art objects – directly from the website.

Build Your Own Bike Lanes

A lack of proper bike lanes is dangerous for everyone on the road, whether you’re a cyclist or a motorist. DIY bike lanes are almost always illegal, but that doesn’t stop people from making them anyway in a form of political vandalism that often forces officials to sit up and pay attention. The tactic can definitely pay off, as it’s not unusual for these temporary lanes – made of traffic cones, flower pots, or even toilet plungers – to eventually become permanent. Tactical Urbanism has a variety of tips in this area, along with case studies that show how it worked out in various cities.

Make Modular Structures Out of Found Objects

Hacking cities needn’t (and arguably shouldn’t) involve the purchase of expensive, heavy, potentially waste-producing materials. DIY urbanists are encouraged, instead, to “hack” into existing modular systems to make them work for new purposes. Examples include Mifactori’s “Circular Street Waste” workshop, in which discarded furniture and other trash collected from the city streets is transformed into versatile multi-use parts that could become tables, benches, shelters and more.

Similarly, the 3erlin Grid (say “Berlin Grid”) offers a grid-based decentralized open standard for building objects and structures that always leaves a distance of 3cm between holes for nuts and bolts so all parts always fit together and can be combined in infinite ways. So if one person builds, say, a DIY table for a city, someone else can come along and add to it. They’re often based on children’s toys, found objects that can be easily modified, like fencing and scaffolding. The principles follow those of OpenStructures, which include using recyclable materials, designing for disassembly and making components as cross-compatible as possible.

Many tactical urbanism projects are self-explanatory, and easy to recreate just by looking at what other people have accomplished. Check out some of our previous posts on urban hacking for a whole lot of inspiration.

Tactical Urbanism: 15 Low-Cost City Hacks for Fun & Functionality

The Rotten Apple Project: Quick & Dirty Urban Hacks

City Hacktivism: 12 Fun DIY Urban Interventions

Hack Your City: Guerrilla Grafter’s Guide for Making Ornamental Trees Edible

Street Re-View: Hacking Google with Theatrical Performances

Abandoned Bridge Amphitheater Reclaims Public Space

When the government fails to meet the needs of its citizens, the citizens will go around them and produce their own solutions, whether they’re legal or not. That might mean occupying an alleyway with temporary housing, using cheap materials to create new public seating and other street furniture, or turning a disused city square into a park. In the Omaha neighborhood of Aksarben this week, it meant cyclists rounding up 120 toilet plungers and transforming them into a DIY bike lane barricade on one of the city’s more dangerous streets.

Group glues 120 toilet plungers onto Omaha street to show what a protected bike lane could do https://t.co/5XHamPfqwC pic.twitter.com/sxr5d31HIU

— Omaha World-Herald (@OWHnews) May 17, 2017

The group, calling itself PSA, or Plungers for Safer Aksarben, wrapped the plungers’ handles with reflective tape and glued them to the street without asking permission from the city. They knew their installation wouldn’t stay up forever, but hoped it would remain in place for at least 36 hours to call attention to a growing problem, since this bike lane has been the site of multiple accidents. City workers came by to take them down after just three hours.

Todd Pfitzer, the deputy director for transportation for the city of Omaha, told KETV “You just can’t decide one day to go out and do something on a public street, which is owned by taxpayers, that could create a dangerous situation without at least working with Public Works and getting a permit for it.” But he also said the city wouldn’t have approved a permit anyway.

Well, actually, Todd, you can do that, if the city fails to take necessary action. Just ask your fellow Midwestern city of Wichita, Kansas. Members of a tactical urbanism group calling themselves the Yellowbrick Street Team installed their own makeshift bike lane safety barricade using plungers, reflective tape and masonry adhesive back in March with the same goal, and city officials ultimately agreed that a more permanent solution was needed. Since then, they put up real barriers in the plungers’ place.

Images via the Omaha World-Herald, Todd Ramsay and Jaime Green of The Wichita Eagle