(SOCIAL) “72 Hour Urban Action” Takes Over Bat Yam, Israel

"Teams have 72 hours to re-design an urban area in a pretty crumby satellite city in Israel. It’s guerilla urban architecture.

We’ve all had the same thought: it’s been built, we’re stuck with it. This ugly urban mess we have created is here to stay and there’s nothing we can do about it; may as well put up our feet, grab a lager, and watch re-runs of 'The Days of Our Lives' to wile away the misery. Others challenge that notion, and show the rest of us couch-potatoes that actually we have an extraordinary capacity for innovation and have the necessary power to reverse our unsustainable trends. And not only can we fix our mistakes during this lifetime (instead of leaving it for our kids to deal with), we can make serious headway over a weekend. They started with the 72 Hour Urban Action Program in Israel’s less-than-glamorous Bat Yam.

'Bat Yam is almost entirely built, and has no other choice but to re-examine its already existing urban fabric,' Kerem Halbrecht, the Israeli architect who dreamed up the Urban Action, told the New York Times Magazine. 'I wanted to challenge the common perception that creating change in public space is long and difficult, and to see if public space can respond to changing needs in real time.'"