Temporary Uses

Rossana Galdini, Sapienza University of Rome

Definition

Temporary uses represent experimental and innovative solutions to give new life to vacant buildings and unused spaces while conserving their historical, identity and environmental value. These spaces become sites for co-creation practices, unlocking many innovative cultural, social, and entrepreneurial activities, including place-making and support of collaborative practices. Temporary uses are operational strategies that can create new interpretations and formalisations of urban spaces (Galdini, 2019).

Temporality reflects the contemporary utilitarian notion of time, society’s fragmentation, and the need for experimentation and innovation. Temporary urbanism emphasises the role of new actors who are promoters and beneficiaries in shaping places (Henneberry, 2017).

The large number of “temporarily out of use” urban spaces represents potential waiting spaces, i.e., spaces waiting to be turned into opportunity places. These exceptional fragments of the city (De Smet, 2013), functioning as nodes of difference and change, become triggers for urban innovation. The temporary nature of these transformations allows citizens to engage creatively with urban living solutions, involving them in shaping their city’s future (Lehtovuori & Ruoppila, 2012). By enabling the assignment of new functions and meanings, the temporary reutilization of under-utilised spaces can strategically foster local development while promoting an integrated approach to broader urban regeneration processes.

As a specific type of spatial planning, temporary uses facilitate dialogue among various public, private, and civil society actors.

In addition to a conservation-oriented approach that seeks to preserve heritage and site-specific identity, temporary uses are conceived as a holistic, integrated strategy that enhances the creativity and resilience of contemporary cities in terms of spatial, social, environmental, and economic conditions.

Background information and contemporary debate

In the past, the term temporary use identified any action that uses a place other than its common use for some time. However, recently, the concept has been defined as those uses that imply a development orientation, i.e., the capacity to explore further potential of the places they are located. Once the binary between temporary and permanent is established, temporary urbanism can be considered a new method for improving urban life quality and putting dialogue across and between professional urban developers and local actor groups into practice.

The spread of urban reuse practices testifies to an emerging innovative approach in which temporary uses are conceived as a holistic, integrated strategy that enhances the creativity and resilience of contemporary cities’ spatial, social, environmental and economic conditions. Temporary urbanism activates a space in need of transformation and has an impact on the surrounding socio-economic environment. The key concepts are time and temporality. This latter defines the contemporary utilitarian notion of time, the fragmentation of society, and the need for experimentation and innovation. Temporary urbanism also includes temporary, informal, and, above all, bottom-up practices. 

Starting from the late 1980s, areas in between have become the subject of several studies and subsequent categorisations. They are considered critical, such as lost spaces (Trancik, 1986), critical spaces, vague terrain, and areas that lie outside urban dynamics (De Solà Morales, 1996). Voids have the potential to become full of meaning, functions, opportunities, and identity. 

Reusing these spaces presents an opportunity to test projects, verify their effectiveness, and make them permanent with the user’s cooperation.  In the last decades, temporary uses have become central and strategic components of urban planning, development and management, with clear input in urban cultural and social policies. Although they may be viewed as transitory and isolated projects, the incremental changes in these practices can form part of a broader, integrated urban regeneration strategy that negotiates between past, present and future development (Galdini, 2020).

References

De Smet, A. (2013). The role of temporary use in urban (re)development: Examples from Brussels. Brussels Studies, 72. https://doi.org/10.4000/brussels.1196

De Solà Morales, I. (1996). Presentey futuros. La arquitectura en las ciudades. Actar.

Galdini, R. (2020). Temporary uses in contemporary spaces. A European project in Rome. Cities, 96 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2019.102445

Henneberry, J. (2017). Transience and permanence in urban development. Wyle & Sons.

Lehtovuori, P., & Ruoppila, S. (2012). Temporary uses as means of experimental urban planning. SAJ Serbian Architectural Journal, 4(1), 29-54. 

Trancik, R. (1986). Finding lost space. Van Nostrand Reinhold.