Civic improvements often emerge from unplanned urban activity
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Can a government town like Ottawa truly be a messy city? And what exactly is a “messy city,” anyway?
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Those questions ran through my mind as I read the 2025 book Messy Cities: Why We Can’t Plan Everything. The book’s editors, four Toronto urbanists, purposely avoided defining the term “messy city” (although it’s clear they weren’t advocating for litter-strewn communities).
“We didn’t give people a definition because we kind of wanted to see how people responded,” says Dylan Reid, one of the book’s editors. “But to me, messy urbanism is everything that’s informal or unplanned or kind of irregular or unconventional in the city.”
With essays from 44 writers, the book offers diverse examples. Desire lines, those well-trodden dirt paths that pedestrians make when taking a shortcut from point A to point B, get several shoutouts. A Toronto “beach” that sprang up in a vacant lot, an ugly-but-popular L.A. taco stand and an urban lawn planted with wildflowers are other examples. In some cities, people engage in “tactical urbanism,” setting up tiny parks in parking spaces or painting their own crosswalks across busy intersections.
Such innovations often cause conflicts between fans and haters. However, Reid says, civic improvements often emerge from these heated debates.
He gives the example of graffiti tags. Taggers may see graffiti as a way to express themselves harmlessly on neglected spaces, but lots of other people view it as vandalism. Since many taggers won’t paint over artwork, many cities now encourage artists to create murals on blank walls. As a result, formerly dull spaces become local landmarks and even tourist attractions.
“That would not have happened if it wasn’t for the tagging,” Reid says of Toronto’s mural program. Without some messiness, he adds, “we’re not going to have the kind of vitality that we want in a city.”
Despite Ottawa’s reputation for caution, it’s easy to find informal or unconventional uses of urban spaces. In 1986, artist John Felice Ceprano began creating balanced stone sculptures in the Ottawa River at Remic Rapids Park. By 1998, they’d become such a beloved attraction that the National Capital Commission offered him a contract to keep building them.
In another example that might be termed “compounding messiness,” a post on a neighbourhood Facebook page inspired a blockade of the 2022 truckers’ convoy on Riverside Drive. The following year, a professor installed a fake City of Ottawa plaque nearby to commemorate “the Battle of Billings Bridge.” The plaque was promptly stolen.
Ottawa frequently tries to divert urban messiness into somewhat controlled channels. For instance, along with a mural program, the city has created three legal graffiti walls: one under the Dunbar Bridge near Carleton University, another near the Albert Street Education Centre and a third at the Bob MacQuarrie Recreation Complex in Orléans.