Timescapes of urban change: The temporalities of regenerated streets

Abstract

Urban regeneration strategies since the 1980s have been framed around a recovery and extension of the urban realm by focusing on the redevelopment of streets as loci for public life and social interaction. Research has tended to analyse these changes through an exclusive focus on the effect spatial transformations have in reshaping social life. This article seeks to extend engagement with the concept of the regenerated street by examining its temporal dimensions. Bringing together Lefebvre’s trialectic of the conceived, the perceived and the lived with Adam’s notion of timescapes, the article argues that we need to attend more closely to the multiple temporalities that underpin interventions of urban change. In particular, this article explores how temporalities of planning, the environment and everyday life interact to create unique timescapes of urban change. By drawing on a longitudinal study of the regeneration of the Rambla del Raval in Barcelona, the article explores the multiple, at times interdependent, at times divergent temporalities that are tangled up in the making and experiencing of this street. The article suggests to approach urban regeneration as a long-term process and place making as a temporal practice where a diversity of temporal modalities interact to produce a diverse and dynamic sense of place.

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