Sometimes, a reclaimed piece of junk is all it takes to make a bus stop, bike rack, subway station or virtually any other urban setting more comfortable and fun. The Rotten Apple project consists of incredibly fast and cheap urban interventions that anyone can replicate in their own cities, from a simple hinged wooden board that turns a bike rack into a folding seat to improvised tools that transform scaffolding into a musical instrument.

A piece of scrap wood and some chess pieces, fitted onto the top of a fire hydrant, becomes a public game board. An old, unused newspaper dispenser is a cold weather clothing bank with the addition of a sticker.

Commuters waiting on the bus have a place to hang their bags thanks to an old IKEA clothes hook added to a street sign. Other signs were modified into sidewalk tetherballs or double-height bike racks.

Magnetic boards on the subway platform aren’t just a fun way to pass the time, they can also brighten up someone’s day with a cheerful message. A window of an abandoned building, bricked up long ago, is a public bookshelf, and a sticker applied to an electric main notifies passersby that there’s an outlet hidden inside so they can charge their phones.

The people who run Rotten Apple have chosen to remain anonymous, leaving only this quote from Victor Pananek as a clue to their motivations: “Design, if it is to be ecologically responsible and socially responsive, must be revolutionary and radical in the truest sense. It must dedicate itself to… maximum diversity with minimum inventory… or doing the most with the least.”

If city officials won’t do their part to make public spaces more fun, efficient, useful, comfortable and creative, citizens will take matters into their own hands. DIY urbanism, or ‘hacktivism,’ is the practice of altering urban environments in ways that aren’t officially sanctioned, whether by turning vacant lots into temporary playgrounds, adding swings to bridges, seed-bombing neglected city spaces or knitting giant hats for bus stop shelters.

City Swings

The spaces under piers, beside bridges and beneath industrial remains are transformed into instant playgrounds with surreptitiously installed swings funded by The Awesome Foundation for the Arts and Sciences. The Los Angeles chapter of the group awarded its $1,000 2011 grant to artist Jeff Waldman, who chose underutilized spots around the city to install temporary swings. A similar project hung spill swings from the handrails on San Francisco’s BART public transit system, while the more complex 21 Swings project in Montreal coordinated the urban swings with music for an interactive experiment.

DIY Urban Furniture

If there aren’t comfortable places to sit and hang out in urban locales, perhaps the people should just create them, whether they turn scaffolding into instant hangouts with bracket-equipped furniture or bring specially made tables that fit perfectly onto public steps. Some temporary installations have gone so far as to create entire urban living rooms complete with couches, bookshelves and coffee tables that invite passersby to take a seat, relax, get to know each other better and enjoy impromptu musical performances. One particularly creative guerrilla seat design is simply a piece of plywood printed with an icon of a chair that attaches quickly and easily to street signs and can be folded up when not in use.

Vacant Lot Playgrounds & Hangouts

It’s incredibly frustrating when your neighborhood lacks a decent playground or public recreation space, yet multiple vacant lots surrounded by razor wire-topped fences waste away for years on end. Why should such spaces be closed off to the public when they’re not in use? Many DIY urbanism projects focus on reclaiming these spaces with non-permanent setups for community gardens, swing sets and even mini golf. Repurposing vacant lots maintains a sense of vitality and egalitarianism in the community, especially during times of economic sluggishness when planned construction projects are indefinitely delayed.

Yarn Bombing

Who wouldn’t smile at custom-crocheted sweaters for trees, phone booths and bicycles? Yarn bombing is the practice of adding knitted and crocheted additions to all sorts of public objects, just for the fun of it. Bus stops are given giant winter hats, bus seats get a lot cozier and stop signs suddenly become red flowers with the addition of green leaves and a ‘stem.’

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City Hacktivism 12 Fun Diy Urbanism Interventions

Just try to locate a truly comfortable outdoor, public place to lounge around your city. Typically what you’ll find are rigid benches that discourage people from lingering too long. Artist Oliver Show sought to remedy that in Hamburg, Germany, by creating bold yellow benches, couches and other seating areas in unexpected places.

The sculptural, flexible seating areas are created by wrapping yellow drainage pipes around the city’s existing infrastructure including bridge trusses, bike racks, handrails and trees. The material is low-cost and weather-resistant, and its bright color enables it to stand out among the largely neutral hues of its surroundings.

“The interventionist and experimental approach to me is more important than the quest for a ‘perfect’ product,” the artist told Der Spiegel (via Architzer).  The installation won Show a design award from the HFBK Leinemann Foundation for Education and the Arts.

When urban spaces are designed to prevent people from getting too comfortable – a problem that could be partially solved by coming up with some creative solutions for homeless housing – they perpetuate a cycle of constant motion that keeps city residents from pausing to notice, enjoy and interact with their surroundings. If only urban planners would take more cues from artists, and from the very people who use the infrastructure they design.