The graphic urban ground is a specific genre for staging collective urban life. Inherently flat, it nonetheless organizes space and activity through color and pattern with limited three-dimensional elements, and is usually meant to be read from above as well as experienced on the ground. Recently proliferating temporary versions are mostly public artPublic art works—sometimes referred to as ground murals or “asphalt art”—realized primarily with paint. Found worldwide, the most common of these are basketball courts, and other versions include crosswalks and collective spaces. At their best, the temporary nature of these projects enables important experimentation, as at Cover the Grid by Outpost Office, part of the 2021 Chicago ArchitectureArchitecture Biennial. But as temporary efforts literally and figuratively fade, the long term collective impacts of a set of permanent versions crystallize. This is most evident in the work of the Brazilian landscape architect Roberto Burle Marx, which is informed by Portuguese calçada pavements, and especially in his Copacabana Beachfront project (1970) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Yet another model is emerging that combines temporary and permanent graphic grounds to rethink contemporary streetscape and collective space, where the temporary is an intentional, phase-one experiment with an explicit goal of phase-two permanent change. Projects such as the temporary Lakeview Lincoln Hub/permanent LAB Reconstruction (2009–2023) in Chicago, Illinois by site design group, ltd. and AECom show the opportunities and challenges of both process and genre in the long game of reimagining the collective urban realm.