The Bolling building fits a new category of what one might call strategic architecture: projects that combine the forces of community activism and historic preservation with government muscle, encourage future development through eye-catching design, and link to the parks, plazas, bike paths and libraries that give neighborhoods a center. These are hybrids, not large-scale institutions like museums but urban players, being built in places not necessarily known for design. They will open new routes through old cities and new ideas about what businesses can be successful in which locations.

The idea that urban planning could build upon citizen action, rather than consisting of imposed boulevards or housing blocks (as with the urban renewal that originally gutted Roxbury) is gaining traction. The Museum of Modern Art, which has exhibited its fair share of top-down architectural proposals, amplifies that conversation with “Uneven Growth: Tactical Urbanisms for Expanding Megacities” opening Nov. 22. The museum asked six interdisciplinary teams to devise new strategies to deal with environmental, spatial, and residential challenges in six of the world’s cities, often learning from informal, smaller-scale design that residents have accomplished on their own.

Theaster Gates, the Chicago artist and planner who gave a keynote speech at this summer’s American Institute of Architects national convention, has recently offered a twist on bottom-up efforts at revitalization. Over the past few years, Mr. Gates and his nonprofit have renovated buildings on the South Side, creating housing and small-scale cultural facilities with a distinctive aesthetic of reused, patchworklike building materials.