In a UCLA Urban Humanities Initiative Capstone titled “On Your Own: Micro-Urbanisms and Young Pedestrians,” urban humanities students focused on the overlooked communities in urban recreational spaces - parks, where students aim to empower the youth through micro-urbanist interventions through integrating play into places youth travel every day to, around the theme of spatial justice. Students introduced three activities that edit three systems within, or on the edges of Lafayette Park. The research and activities cumulate into a handbook of micro-urbanism, titled “Craft the City.”
Micro-urbanisms—however informal, temporary, or minor in scale—are small interventions in the city that foster community engagement, shared interests, or civic improvement, building a public sphere that advances spatial justice and contributes to long-term change. The final project for the capstone was a playful urban intervention that synthesized the course’s three touchstones: micro-urbanism as the practical dimension, youth-friendly cities as the humanistic dimension, and Lafayette Park as the geographical dimension. Led by centering the young people who call Heart of Los Angeles (HOLA) and Lafayette Park home and centering our core community commitments and agreements (table on rear cover), the 2023 UCLA UHI Micro-Urbanism capstone cohort set out to make this slice of Los Angeles more welcoming and youth-friendly...
...one craft at a time.
