Paper short abstract:

The Covid-19 pandemic is a risk had been underestimated. It has affected both the organization of care and population movements. Based on a comparative research I investigate what the management of contamination risks by tactical urbanism tell us about risks and the underlying political agenda.

Paper long abstract:

The Covid-19 pandemic is a risk that had not been anticipated or, more precisely, its extent had been underestimated. Both the organization of care and population movements have been affected. Here, the crisis has been a moment of weakening of the hegemonic framework and countered the preparedness (Keck 2016), that 'state of vigilance cultivated by the imaginary of disaster' at the heart of the processes of anticipation of crises and therefore of risks. In response to the risk of contamination which has created a need for physical distancing, as well as to counter the risk of a massive modal shift towards the car, metropolises around the world implemented pop-up cycling infrastructures limiting the space given to cars and/or pedestrians, depending on the case, whose creation disregarded the usual urban planning rules. A material and political response to a health risk. Indeed, even if the infrastructures built throughout the world are similar, a tactical urbanism to protect cyclists' traffic that can be easily dismantled, they refer to different representations of the risks incurred and do not serve the same political agenda. Based on a comparative research carried out in several cities in France and around the world, this paper will show how the management of contamination risks by tactical urbanism has also made it possible, following Douglas, to highlight the cultural and political differences, the role of the technicians and through it which hidden agenda it was answering.