Temporary urbanism as a new policy strategy: a contemporary panacea or a trojan horse?

ABSTRACT

Over the last two decades, temporary uses of space are spreading in Europe as a new policy tool to recover vacant areas. The theoretical debate is divided between the promoters of these new forms of tailor-made urbanism and the detractors, who argue that temporary urbanism is increasingly subject to profit logic as an urban policy strategy. Through two French case studies (The ‘Grands Voisins’ in Paris and the ‘Transfer Project’ in Nantes), the article discusses the characteristics of temporary urban planning and its intrinsic tension between a contemporary panacea and a trojan horse. Can the ‘temporary city’ be a partial response to the issues of social inclusion, housing, and equal accessibility to spaces and amenities, which the contemporary city seems to fail in? Or is temporary urbanism just an alibi for administrations and local leaders to continue perpetrating neoliberal policies?

KEYWORDS:

• Temporary urbanism
• vacancy
• urban policies
• urban regeneration
• neoliberalism

Acknowledgement

The authors would like to acknowledge and thank the editor of International Planning Studies and the two anonymous reviewers, whose insightful and valuable comments helped improve the article. The authors would also like to thank Prof. Nadia Caruso, who has coordinated the URbANIsM research project, and Prof. Gilles Novarina and Prof. Laurent Devisme for their precious suggestions. We are also grateful to Margaret Pate for her feedbacks in improving the flow of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Politecnico di Torino and Compagnia di San Paolo under the initiative ‘Create a network around your research idea (Metti in rete la tua idea di ricerca)’.