Other examples are more subtle. From snipping intrusive hedges to cleaning up after other people's dogs, you’ve probably benefited from countless tiny acts of civic kindness without even knowing it.

“There are amazing individuals and projects striving to maintain, to repair, to reuse, to sustain, to steward, to remanufacture, and to recycle things of value,” Laura James, a U.K.-based engineer who helped launched the Festival of Maintenance, told OK Whatever through email. “Today we don’t value maintenance the way we value invention. We don’t recognize maintainers the way we do makers.”

She and a group of volunteers launched the Festival of Maintenance in 2018 to merge outreach with networking. The one day event — which takes place this year in Liverpool — included a series of educational lectures with titles like, “Status of Maintenance: What has happened and why?”

James sensed the timing for such an event was right. “There’s more interest in this now,” she said, because our cities have become too big and overextended.

The key to informally fixing things is not only doing the job well, but doing it right.

It’s not enough just to repair stuff; you’ve got to ensure that it will last and not be removed by the city. That means matching shades of paint perfectly, mimicking exact fonts, and following uniform standards and specifications. Basically, your work should be so convincing that no one even notices it.

If you’re someone who enjoys praise and feedback, performing random acts of guerrilla public service might not be for you. It’s a mostly thankless endeavor — partially because you don’t want to get caught. If you are, you might get slapped with a ticket or even arrested for vandalism. It helps to consult city codes and ordinances before fixing things and to take action only when few people are around.

But, moreover, taking credit isn’t what guerrilla public service is about. It’s about keeping cities safe and beautiful, stepping up when resources are tight, and indirectly improving the lives of others just because you can.