Temporal Entanglements, Fragmented Spaces: Planning, Politics, and Place Rhythms

Abstract

What does it mean for urban planners and designers to shape places through and with time? The 2020 public health restrictions highlighted the relevance of Carlos Moreno’s et al. (2021) 15-minute-city concept, which outlined the need for a “chrono-urbanism” incorporating societal resilience micro-infrastructures. Notions of temporal planning, however, have deeper roots; Kevin Lynch’s classic imageability (1964) and place-timing studies (1972) highlighted Planning as a temporal art, distinct from arts such as music, and his urban theorization (1984) identified three epochs of city form (the cosmic, organic, and mechanical) as successively dominant, spatiotemporal paradigms. More recently, Christopher Alexander’s (2002) analyses on the “nature of order” drew attention to the importance of time and geometry for the appropriate unfolding of complexity across domains from the arts and crafts to the scales of built form. Time is implicated in Planning’s capacity to effectively harness space in meeting societal needs and challenges. Given the “temporal turn” in urban planning and design, this is an appropriate juncture to reflect upon technical assumptions underlying varied approaches to place-shaping. This issue explores how currently dominant, linear-temporal modes might be influencing spatial planning and design practices, and how inclusion of diverse, forgotten, and hidden spatiotemporal narratives including from the global South could aid development of alternative theories, tools, practices, and forms. Contributions also address implications digital modes may have for education, praxis, or resilient, city visions, and what might be the contribution of temporal perspectives in addressing the slow and out-of-sight violence created by toxic geographies or urban transformations.

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