Speaker
Description
Temporary urbanism in planning and governance processes has been the subject of extensive research in recent years. While temporary uses have always existed in our cities, short-term events—such as temporary construction and space usage—have increased in frequency. This phenomenon has become known as temporary urbanism (Madanipour, 2017). These practices have shifted from marginal informality to tools in mainstream urban policies to experiment with the reactivation of spaces (Galdini, 2020).
These projects have increasingly been carried out through hybrid formats (Andres and Zhang, 2020): they are integrated into top-down policies, programs, and evaluations but are executed on the ground by organisations specializing in the temporary management of vacant spaces. These organisations act as intermediaries between owners and users. (Vivant, 2022). These organisations can include professionalised artistic collectives, as well as new urban professionals inspired by spaces of artistic critique (Pinard and Vivant, 2017) or by publications on the experimental value of temporary uses (Ferreri, 2015).
These hybrid projects are seen as contradictory, blending different worlds and contexts. They enact at the same time the horizon of a just city and a creative (and neoliberal) city (Bragaglia and Rossignolo, 2021). Temporary urbanism intermediaries may, for example, provide shelters for migrants, aligning with Lefebvre’s concept of the right to the city, while also promoting their methods to real estate developers at international fairs (Vivant, 2022).
Research has critically examined this apparent lack of coherence. However, rather than viewing these contradictions as mere inconsistencies, this contribution explores how actors themselves make sense of these tensions and how they act in practice. This perspective provides a better understanding of how hybrid forms of temporary urbanism balance different conflicting normative prescriptions active in this field today.
To investigate these contradictions, the paper explores the operations of temporary urbanism through two analytical shifts from current perspectives. First, it examines intermediaries beyond the reduction of these actors to a specific sector of intervention (e.g. third sector, non-profit). It focuses instead on their actions and their relation to public problems, through the concept of civic action, intended as flexibly organized, collective, social problem solving, in which participants coordinate action to improve some condition seen as socially relevant (Lichterman and Eliasoph, 2014). This approach traces both civic and noncivic actions, such as compliance with government-mandated procedures or revenue-driven activities
Secondly, it considers the role of culture in shaping these actions. While research on these practices has often considered them as technical and neutral, I assume – following the civic action perspective – that these actions are shaped by socially and culturally embedded scene styles, which are recurrent patterns of interaction that arise from members’ shared assumptions about what constitutes good or adequate participation in the group setting (Lichterman & Eliasoph 2014). By tracing the appropriate ways to act and balance these prescriptions, the contribution highlights how different cultural elements shape these projects, their solutions, and their outcomes.
The contribution, based on six months of ethnographic fieldwork in a Parisian temporary urbanism project managed by two intermediaries outlines the main scene styles adopted in this project and their relation to different dilemmas faced by actors. It also traces the different forms of hybridization in action, particularly in relation to the market and public administrations.
Building on these cultural analyses, this contribution illustrates how cultural elements shape the balance between civic and noncivic actions among temporary urbanism intermediaries in France, guiding their projects toward specific strategies, solutions, and relationships.
References
Andres, L. and Zhang, A.Y. (2020) Transforming Cities Through Temporary Urbanism. Cham: Springer. 10.1007/978-3-030-61753-0_1.
Bragaglia, F. and Rossignolo, C. (2021) ‘Temporary urbanism as a new policy strategy: a contemporary panacea or a trojan horse?’, International Planning Studies, 26(4), pp. 370–386. 10.1080/13563475.2021.1882963.
Ferreri, M. (2015) ‘The seductions of temporary urbanism’, Ephemera Journal, 15(1), pp. 181–191.
Galdini, R. (2020) ‘Temporary uses in contemporary spaces. A European project in Rome’, Cities, 96, p. 102445. 10.1016/j.cities.2019.102445.
Lichterman, P. and Eliasoph, N. (2014) ‘Civic Action’, American Journal of Sociology, 120(3), pp. 798–863. 10.1086/679189.
Madanipour, A. (2017) Cities in time: temporary urbanism and the future of the city. London: Bloomsbury Academic.
Pinard, J. and Vivant, E. (2017) ‘La mise en évènement de l’occupation temporaire : quand les lieux artistiques off inspirent les opérateurs in de la production urbaine:’, L’Observatoire, N° 50(2), pp. 29–32. 10.3917/lobs.050.0029.
Vivant, E. (2022) ‘From margins to capital: The integration of spaces of artistic critique within capitalist urbanism’, Journal of Urban Affairs, 44(4–5), pp. 490–503. 10.1080/07352166.2020.1811115.
| Keywords | Temporary Urbanism; Hybrid Civic Action; Ethnography; France; |
|---|---|
| Best Congress Paper Award | Yes |
