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Abstract
The paper investigates the phenomenon of short-lived landscapes in European cities, analysing the causes and contexts of their emergence, exploring their links with urban shrinkage, and examining their roles in urban transformation. Five cases from Liverpool, Glasgow, London, Paris, and Brussels are studied in two groups of garden festivals and temporary parks, covering a range of scales, periods, locations, and agents of development. Economic, political, and cultural changes have created the conditions of urban shrinkage and temporary interventions, whereby landscape is treated as a flexible means to an end, a short-lived event that reflects, and paves the way for, structural change. As the cases demonstrate, however, the instrumental use of landscape for economic purposes is not the only way forward.