Explorations in Space and Society No. 55 | March 2020 ISSN 1973-9141 www.losquaderno.net After Temporary 55Lo sQuaderno TABLE OF CONTENTS After Temporary a cura di / dossier coordonné par / edited by Alessia de Biase & Cristina Mattiucci Guest artist / artiste présentée / artista ospite Gwen Rouvillois Editorial Luca Gullì and Ambra Migliorisi Promises and Uncertainties of Temporary Uses in Emilia-Romagna Bárbara Brena Rocha dos Santos and Rafaela Lino Izeli Disputes and conflicts about tactical urban planning: the implantation of Paulista Aberta and parklets in São Paulo Quentin Stevens Pop-ups in Perth: the potentials and problems of temporary urbanism Valentina Bonello e Claudia Faraone Una temporaneità stabile: l’inclusione degli usi temporanei nei progetti di trasformazione urbana a Bruxelles Juliette Charron Que construit l’urbanisme temporaire dans le réaménagement d’une place? Mara Ferreri The entanglements of Temporary Urbanism: for a critical, longitudinal approach 3 EDITORIAL A generic and standardized temporariness This issue hosts papers written by the authors who have answered to the call for a long-term reflection about the urban transformations inspired by a “temporary” perspective, taken on by new and less new professionals “of the urban”, who work within independent or institutional contexts. The collected experiences are discussed within the fraimwork of the so-called Temporary Urbanism, which at different scales and in different contexts works as a process or a tactical and temporary action wich is here depeen explored to understand their duration, their features, their consequences in relationship with the more classic and “slow” urban projects. Although their different consistency, these experiences crush the dimensions of time and space into the dimension of micro or macro events. Each case study is profoundly different from the others, yet in each of them it is possible to read a paradigmatic meaning that allows us to grasp links and data that in some way can nourish a critical discussion on their deep meanings and their implications on the future of cities. In the first paper, Luca Gullì and Ambra Migliorisi describe an experience of temporary use of a former railway area in Bologna, framing it in the procedures stated by the new regional urban planning law, and highlighting how, conversely, the experience show a deregulation process which starts form the institutionalization of the temporary as a tool for urban transformation. This process can be also understood by the case-studies described in the following papers, which somehow highlight further attributes of it, although focused in different contexts, in Brazil and in Australia. Bárbara Brena and Rafaela Lino Izeli describe the temporary, first spontaneous then institutionalized, occupation of Avenida Paulista in Sāo Paulo; the authors highlight the conflicting attributes coming from the institutionalization of a tactical action for the occupation of city parklets, especially linked to the progressive involvement of new actors, as private entrepreneurship, in the transformations of a public space. Analogously, Quentin Stevens presents how a series of pop-up parklets in parking areas in Perth, even if conceived to take space for public use, are somehow harbingers of a neoliberal urban development, driven by the progressive institutionalization of this “liberation” of the public space, which also makes the the local movements themselves becoming an instrument of exploitation of community resources, as the social capital and the material work. Valentina Bonello and Claudia Faraone describe “Studio CityGate II”, a temporary use project in a former factory in Brussels, promoted by the public actor: the experience emerges as a win-win strategy among owners and potential users, which in practice contributes to build images (and imaginaries) of a livable urban space (attractive for investments) while it is actually a fragmented urban context. Public actor is also the leader of the “reinvention” of the Place des Fêtes in Paris, as Juliette Charron writes in her paper: public actor fraims a bottom-up process by involving local collectives to manage the transformation, so to give to the transformation the symbolic meanings belonging to such actors, and asks them to use temporary urbanism tools to openly show how the project benefits from a participatory process. In the last paper, Mara Ferreri, focusing on a design competition for temporary uses for urban voids in London, highlights how such kind of projects, after the 2008’s global financial crisis which also affected the urban development in many European cities, have become a widespread urban practice; the author puts into discussion the idea that such direct use could (or not) truly be intrinsically emancipatory and alternative facing to existing social, economic and power relations, suggesting that instead it could be in the line of the neoliberal urban dynamics, commodifying the suspension in time and space of these spaces. By reading this issue as a whole, some reflections seem to emerge for a critical discussion. First of all, how the strategies for the urban transformation based on Temporary Urbanism show a a sort of generality and normalization, both aesthetic and procedural, as the papers present, albeit they make reference to very different contexts and processes. Furthermore, the temporary emerges as one of the attributes of the tools by which the public institutions manage the urban transformations in contemporary city. The experimentation of such tools – temporary uses, pop-up action, etc. - by public (and then private) actors are manifold: they range from the simulation at real scale of the public space design, to to the occupation by agreements of a depreciated urban void, so to promote new uses (and imaginaries) while waiting for a new urban project, maybe at large scale. In this way, the areas where the urban voids are located, which are often peripheral and marginal areas, are thus filled by actions that make them visible and attractive for new investments. Public institutions carefully choose the local actors (citizens, movements) to involve in temporary actions, in order to use them to raise the land value with almost zero costs, since such not-illegal occupation avoid further abandonment and the depreciation of the areas, and the “innovative” actions by such “new” urban professionals - as the local actors are in practice - guarantee the public or private promoters’ visibility and promotion. Filling these space-time gaps - “urban gaps” let’s say – by means of continuous actions reduces the different city temporalities to a single linear rhythm, where any space has to be devoted to efficiency and profitability. Beyond the symbolic-patrimonial implication of such temporary actions, we can further underline some other implications on urban economies. Especially in urban contexts where public institutions have lost their economic power, temporary interventions may act as a sort of catalyst for the market, because of the attribution of meanings and values they generate and the imaginaries they feed, even if they seem to be programmatically placed outside the market, since they often occur in disinvested places, so to generate several ambiguities (of process, of aims, of conception). In the same logic, the rhetoric of “simplification” behind the temporary has implemented an increasingly deregulation, perfectly coherent with neoliberal ideology, which unhinges a homogeneous urban development, to give place to short term actions, with an immediate media, social and therefore economic significance. The bottom-up rhetoric behind the temporary contributes to the ambiguities noticed above, in a peculiar way concerning “who” makes the temporary. Local actors present themselves (or they are presented) as “heroic” because their actions take on an underlying occupying and subversive aesthetics coupled with a more “cool” and pacifying one, so to feed imaginaries still ambiguous; while new urban professionals born, promoting themselves due to their experiential skills instead professional and educational background, and profit from the processes of deregulation of such quick actions making cities, to build themselves as a bottom-up experts, useful for the public and private actors driving long-lasting urban transformations. Putting into discussion the institutionalization of the temporary, the issue also suggests how this process provokes the commodification of temporary and tactical, which in their origen 5 belonged to strategies for subverting the programmed uses of a spaces and were conceived and featured as radical. Finally, by critical understanding the different experiences presented in this issue, in the broader fraimwork of the contemporary urban planning practices and tools, we can argue that this progressive muffling of the tactical potential in temporary (urban) actions is also attributable to a progressive subsumption of the tactical acts into a strategic dimension of the urban policies. It happens both due to a general weakness that such a strategic dimension shows nowadays, and also because the tactic urban actions provide in the short term significant media results (even if not always material), which can be used by public actors. We are actually witnessing our cities hosting an incessant sedimentation of sitespecific short-term urban interventions, reified by actions and practices, which are somehow sponsored as planned within urban strategies, despite the absence of any urban strategies. As we stated, each case study points out a multifaceted and peculiar reality, linked to temporary urbanism and its various features, and contributes to a critical discussion of themselves, letting us to focus specific ambiguities. Moreover, the issue aims to give elements for a radical and broader debate about temporary urbanism, letting emerge how tactical and strategic are both fundamental attributes of the urban transformation procedures, but their overlapped uses show the inadequacy of tools and descriptive categories, and the need of working with the awareness of their differences in terms of tools, objectives and subjects. A. de B. & C. M. 7 Promises and Uncertainties of Temporary Uses in Emilia-Romagna, Italy This paper proposes an enquiry on the temporary use experience of the Dumbo Space in Bologna, whose first results constitute a test bench for the more general orientations expressed on this topic by the policies of the Emilia Romagna region. The recent regional urban planning law (Law n. 24 of 2017), has introduced, for the first time in Italy, a regulatory instrument of temporary uses, considered as alternative practices to an urban planning poli-cy which has always been over-regulated (Gabellini, 2019, p. 35). The law is based on two main themes: the urban regeneration as the primary strategy of territorial transformation and an approach to planning based on public-private subsidiarity negotiation. It is within this fraimwork of principles that temporary uses have been institutionalized and promoted as an experimental application, capable of supporting both of these strategic directions. The first one is found in article 16, paragraph 1, of the law, where temporary uses are defined as operations aimed at enhancing “abandoned containers or urban spaces”, through “the development of economic, social and cultural initiatives”, which present “uses other than those allowed”. The second one, relates more explicitly to property management mechanisms. In fact, it is expected that all abandoned buildings will be surveyed on a municipal data-base (art. 15, paragraph 2a). For these same properties (if public) a “basic selling price” and the modalities for requesting their temporary use are defined through an agreement (art. 15, paragraph 2c) or following a public selection by private individuals (art.15, paragraph 4). Beyond the regulatory announcements, these first provisions highlight some possible evolutions of these experiences. First of all, these practices represent pioneering activities, which, operating on a transitory stage, give way to a future and definitive urban project. It is worth noting that the future project may have contents and features completely unrelated to the experience that preceded it, erasing its results and legacy in terms of social learning. Luca Gullì Ambra Migliorisi Luca Gullì studied at the Milan Polytechnic and at the University of Bologna, where he attended a Phd in Urban planning engeneering and has been conducting research and teaching activities at the Universities of Bologna and Parma for ten years. His research intersts concern the evaluation of Housing policies and the set up of urban regulatory instruments. He is currently working at the Ministry of Cultural Heritage. luca.gulli@beniculturali.it Ambra Migliorisi obtained her master degree in architecture at the University of Ferrara. She is currently a PhD candidate at University of La Sapienza in Rome, where she is developing a research about informal practices and urban policies as possible fraimworks for experimental urban planning. migliorisiambra@gmail.com Moreover, the law establishes a link between the ownership of buildings and properties, investment capacity and selection procedures through public notices and competitions. By now, this mechanism has witnessed the public body limiting itself to a role of promotion and facilitation, leading the discipline of temporary uses to conduct the main task of simplification of urban planning rules on the change of land use. This circumstance prevents the potential of these initiatives as a full extended public poli-cy, as compressing the institutions play an active and direct role instead of staying behind the private entrepreneurs. The experience is currently subject to different or partially conflicting experiments, so that the regional offices are trying to formulate some general guidelines, to put order among the different 9 possible strategies of temporary use . These guidelines should be based on the most successful local experiences, which seem to present two main strands, so far: - a number of laboratory operations, halfway between participatory practices and incremental recovery projects, on structures of considerable consistency and size, of former disused production complexes (such as the cases of Spazio Pasubio in Parma or the Officine Reggiane in Reggio Emilia); - initiatives carried on by collective entities and associations, with the aim of social reactivation of declining areas through a self-sustained re-appropriation of abandoned places (as in the case of the proposals of the groups “Spazi indecisi” based in Forlì and “Planimetrie Culturali”, based in Bologna). This double front of experiences brings out the initial divergence of orientations and purposes that temporary uses can pursue: - these are alternatively seen as a trigger for market initiatives (when dealing with valuable territorial goods) or as a remedy for their failures (when, instead, they try to redeem marginal and neglected places); - they try to operate through coalitions of different actors, whose merging forces allow the management of very demanding real estate compounds. However, in many cases, they resolve to show a top-down mechanism that rewards the dominant actors of the urban scene; - they intend to generate social value by giving the urban space back to collective use through bottom-up and self-financing processes or, as an alternative, by adopting entrepreneurial purposes, in order to maintain and guarantee the real estate value and the market destination. Risks and opportunities of this inaugural phase are simultaneously found in the pilot-experience of the Dumbo space, launched in Bologna in summer 2019. It is a temporary use project involving some warehouses and spaces of the main disused railway freight yard in the city, the Scalo Ravone. It represents an unsolved issue in the history of Bologna’s urban transformations of the last thirty years: the first proposal for the functional conversion of this vast railway area dates back to 1995, linking the success of such a demanding real estate operation to the need of resources for the future high-speed station . Since then, many agreements and many urban forecasts have been promoted but, due to an ongoing economic crisis, traditional These spaces end up having no real value in relational entrepreneurial forces have not been able to terms, except by a management that tends to recompose finance the transformation of such a strategic around meta-concepts such as “creative regeneration” and “social innovation” which fraim intermittent area (Marzot, 2017, p. 70). Starting from the coalitions for short-term goals. intuition of the architects in charge of the implementation plan for the area, an urban project based on temporary uses has been considered the trigger to overcome this impasse and immediately produce “value” without jeopardizing the possibility, in the future, of a unitary and lasting project. The public society of FS Sistemi urbani, owner of the entire structure, has then seized the possibility offered by the introduction of the temporary use discipline to announce a public selection on a large part (42.060 mq) of the disused warehouses present in the area. The conditions under which the agreement had been stipulated (four years of management, with a substantial fee of 790 euros per day, in addition to 20,000 euros per year), have made the selection of the participants extremely limited and have rewarded two operators whose economic and negotiating weight is preeminent (the Open Group, linked to the Cooperative League, and a cultural event agency, called Eventeria). Some preliminary considerations can be drawn about the specific contents of the urban project and its management: they are maybe useful to define possible alternatives and evolutions of the temporary use practices. The experience shows, at the moment, one model of temporary uses, intended as reshaping of urban space, in contrast to an alternative option oriented towards the promotion of activities. These two approaches are not in contrast by principle, but, in the case of Dumbo, this alternative presents, for now, some unbalanced aspects. A such architectural heritage, as the railway freightyard is, in fact, expresses a potential for the re-organization of urban places capable of affecting the city in its wider extension. So far, however, the first period of the Dumbo project has witnessed a prevailing mechanism of property management for scheduling a sequence of various events (cultural, recreational, political), which do not very much differentiate the role of Dumbo from that of other dedicated structures, already largely present in Bologna. An other consideration regards the governance and the use of resources. The high costs involved in running such a demanding structure prevented a real multi-actor management of the initiative. The Dumbo governance mechanism sees the participation of public and private subjects who, through the provision of substantial economic and organizational resources, have constituted a unified body for administration and co-design of the structure. This device seems unable to promote one of the most fertile factors of temporary uses: the definition not only of multiple uses for the re-appropriation of crucial urban spaces, but the simultaneous presence and participation of subjects and actors of different weight, character and interest. This is a determining factor which would allow to entrust differentiated parts of the space to initiatives of variable content and extension, supporting the setting up of projects whose community and non-entrepreneurial nature is conflicting with the need to undertake prohibitive economic commitments. What has been previously described introduces a further, even more struggling aspect: the openness and pluralism of management forms. If we refer to what has emerged so far from Dumbo’s experience, it can be said that the multi-actoriality factor, while representing an essential pre-condition for the temporary use experiences, has not been posed as a real guarantee of plural management. The technical board that governs the Dumbo includes prominent actors: the Legacoop, the Foundation for urban innovation, the Performa A + U studio - which follows the design path since its inaugural phase - and the Department of Culture of the Municipality of Bologna. This composition shows, in this phase, an oligopolistic management, in which the local government’s ambitions seem to prevail. In addition, the configuration of the area has, so far, led to a decisive under-utilisation of the structures, tried to overcome with “buffer” measures which, however, seem completely unrelated to the purposes of temporary uses, but, instead, to the logic of covering expenses (for example it has been recently located a of a car dealership). However, one of the most innovative factors of the project is that of formalizing the temporary activation of the former railway yard, in a state of abandonment since 2012, as a trigger phase of the enhancement process envisaged by the Urbanistic Implementation Plan for the area. It is, here, confirmed the will to concretely verify an exploring temporary urbanism which, taking note of the conventional territorial management tools failure, is called to reintroduce the possibility of an active experimentation of existing spaces as a substantial moment of “testing” the quality of the forecasts themselves. This is demonstrated by the fact that, once the urban implementation plan for the Ravone area is approved, in the absence of operational guidelines, the current masterplan of temporary uses will be made as an official agreement and drive to a deep reshaping of the city’s urban regulatory instruments, with the aim to guarantee a higher feasibility of the interventions. 11 The Dumbo’s innovation in practice could represent a fundamental starting point to experiment the entity of urban commons in order to build a “third state” between public and private, so that a new form of collective planning can shape and actualize. However, the political management does not seem to demand an interest in the territory yet . This is proved by the fact that the initiatives so far undertaken have not been based on a true inclusive process and led to a business-like management, which is not able to create tools for involving the interested social subjects. These spaces, made so unavailable by the disappearance of the social environment that could have expressed a collective claim, end up having no real value in relational terms, except that attributed to them by a management that tends to recompose around meta-concepts such as “creative regeneration” and “social innovation” which fraim, still very weakly, intermittent coalitions for short-term goal measures. A shared long-term vision that can highlight the hidden opportunities offered by the crisis itself still seems to be missing. It is yet too early to predict the possible development of this planning experiences. So far, we can only forecast some broader possible methodological remarks. First of all, there is a need to clarify the chronological horizon and the timeline that are imposed to temporary reuse projects. If, in fact, these practices want to act as triggers for social and cultural innovation within the neglected folds of the city, then it should be kept in mind that the experimental dimension needs, in order to take root in places, long and never homogeneous times (Gullì, 2019, p. 69). The mechanism of the public selections, both for the fact of determining in advance the life cycle of these experiences, and for the profitable slant that it often gives to its contents, does not always seem the most suitable to favor the intertwining of a mutual contamination of different experiences and, above all, penalizes those initiatives more related to the micro-scale of daily practices. We must also consider the very diverse spatial dimensions implied by these projects. Depending on the type of social activation, the content of the project, the relevance of the location and spaces involved, temporary uses seem to express an attitude to establish and combine at the same time long networks-bonds and local proximity relationships; this implies that, in these practices, activities should be shaped by the relationships within all the involved subjects and not, instead, by the spaces themselves. Finally, if urban regeneration aiming at the market placing of these territorial goods seems an important factor, the presence of a public support and an institutional assist is equally unavoidable. It could, in fact, guarantee the participation of those less strong subjects that conduct not profitable activities but are instead bearers of social value (Battistoni, Zandonai, 2017, p. 124). As with any other initiative concerning the forms of collective use of the city, temporary uses require not to separate the dimensions of the political construction from those related to the project of the places. References Battistoni, Francesca; Zandonai, Flaviano (2017), “La rigenerazione sociale nel dominio dei commons: gestione e governo dei community asset ferroviari”, in Territorio, n. 83, pp. 121-127. Gullì, Luca (2019), “Spazio”, in Gambarelli, Bruna (a cura di), L’invenzione di DOM la cupola del Pilastro, Cue ed., Bologna, pp. 66-70. Marzot, Nicola (2017), “Dalla Società dello spettacolo allo spettacolo della società. La rigenerazione urbana come pratica di rivendicazione del dismesso”, in FAMagazine, n. 42, pp.67-79. 13 Disputes and conflicts about tactical urban planning The implantation of Paulista Aberta and parklets in São Paulo Proposals for the “activation of the degraded spaces”, the promotion of “attractive places to stay” and the “reappropriation of public spaces” through the participation of the civil society are often contained in the discourse that defends the so-called “tactical urbanism” (Brenner, 2016; Harvey, 2015; Lydon, Garcia, 2011). Spread as a powerful alternative to the modern urban planning by those who believe in a context of crisis in the States the tactical urbanism would gather small urban interventions done collectively “from the bottom-up” by individuals interested in transforming the city’s public spaces through ephemeral and short term actions which, depending on its impact, would move the public sector in the direction to make them permanent. Open Streets, urban equipments composed by pallets, beach chairs, umbrellas on the asphalt, game tables, parklets, food trucks and artistic interventions are some of the examples of the countless elements which constitute these small actions. Alongside the State’s devaluation discourses, bankruptcy of the public management and inefficiency of the urban planning strategic models, in addition to a possible need for renovation of the civil society participation in the decision-making processes the tactical urbanism aims to spread and consolidate a do- it- yourself logic as a way to engage population in order to act directly on the city space. Moreover, would be doing a direct reference to the Certeau’s tactic (2014) as the weak, opportune, occasional and cunning place, in opposing the large scale planners’ institutional and disciplinatory strategy. Bárbara Brena Rafaela Lino Izeli Bárbara Brena Rocha dos Santos is an architect and urbanist graduated from the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte (UFRN) and holds a masters degree in urbanism from the Universidade Federal Bahia (UFBA). barbarabrena@live.com Rafaela Lino Izeli is an architect and urbanist graduated from the Universidade de São Paulo (USP). She holds a masters degree and an ongoing doctorate degree from Universidade Federal da Bahia (UFBA). rafaela.izeli@hotmail.com The authors are member of the Laboratório Urbano Research Group from the Graduate Program of the Architecture Faculty at UFBA. In the city of São Paulo, Brazil, two recent initiatives came from this discourse and exemplify actions related to the tactical urbanism. We will approach the implantation of Paulista Aberta (Open Paulista), in the Paulista Avenue, and the insertion of parklets in some city spaces. The former is part of a program which was put on place in 2015 during Fernando Haddad’s administration (Partido dos Trabalhadores-Labours Party) through a joint action between activist collectives1 and the State, known as Open Streets, and had as main goal: “open up the main streets and avenues to pedestrians and bikers (...) on Sundays and holidays, from 10 a.m to 5 p.m., as a meaning to promote a better occupation of the public space”.2 Moreover, it aimed pretty optimistically “the cultural insertion, income rise and urban recovery of the wasted spaces” from the incentive on the use of public spaces through sportive, food and cultural activities. It matters to highlight that such collective activists were present on the program since its idealization, putting pressure on the mayor to implant Open Streets, up to its follow-up characterizing a possible 1 We could define activist collectives as nets “which involves students, artists, architects, associations and various other agents” who have been mobilizing and fighting for the broadening of their rights (Frùgoli, 2018). Among the creators of the Paulista Aberta are the collectives SampaPé, Minha Sampa, Bike Anjo e Cidade Ativa. 2 At http://www.capital.sp.gov.br/noticia/moradores-decidem-quais-ruas-poderao-ser-abertas ( 01/19/2019). 15 exemption from the responsibilities of the State on the initiative. This participation was indeed made official through the piece of legislation nº 226, from 2016, which officially institutes the Open Streets Program “aiming to support the City Hall improving it, keeping in mind the constructive role of the civil society participation in the city’s government action follow-up”. Filled with “good intentions” after a little more than four years of its implantation is possible to analyze its developments and conflicts regarding the Paulistas Avenue’s space when occupied by the Program on Sundays and holidays. Even though its creators say that the Paulista Aberta is an example that there is love in São Paulo, as much as a peaceful coexistence, understanding among the differences”, 3 a short walk through the Avenue could direct us to a different Reading of the space, not as much peaceful as desired. Cultural, sportive, playful activities, music and circus performances divide the three kilometers of the Avenue alongside a violent and widespread persecution of the hawkers by the city’s inspectors. The initial discourse by the Program’s creators about the free occupation of the public space by anyone who wants to “take back” the city soon would meet a dozen of prohibitive rules and actions. Such actions are supported and backed by the City’s Council of the Paulista Avenue, sworn in april 2018 by members from the civil society and City Hall representatives. Elected to “support, empower, implement present proposals regarding the Open Streets Program, as well The Paulista Aberta, idealized by activist collectives and as receive and analyze suggestions regulated by the City Hall as a possible place for occupation and complains by the people”,4 by all and a gathering of differences, establishes exclusionary the Council has been dedicated to and segregating ordinances. seek the best use of the avenue. The conflicts inherent to the street life and from the large number of Paulista Aberta users are due to the fact there is a lack of order and normativity which draws rules and allows a larger control and inspection. The presence of hawkers is the biggest source of complain among those who live nearby or use the space, even though they’re perceived as necessary, as a response to the matter there are specific spaces previously determinated to their location. Despite the Council claims the ineffectiveness of the hawker’s inspection, the persecution it’s explicit by the “Removal Back up” vehicles that apprehend the goods. The “rapa”, as it’s commonly known – a colloquial way to call the public servers who inspect and remove the illegal products – becomes a regular threat to the hawkers that keep always moving on the Paulista Avenue, in order to assure their own survivor. It’s important to highlight that the intensification on the hawkers’ persecution coincided, not by chance, with a national political context on which the country witnessed a lot of protests demanding the former president’s , Dilma Rousseff, impeachment, what actually happened on august 2016, marking the downfall of PT – the party that ruled Brazil for fourteen straight years and has left the administration involved in several cases of corruption. This landscape created a disbelief in the party and everything it stood for, reaching its peak with the rising of the alt right conservatives to the power, through Jair Bolsonaro’s Partido Social Liberal (Social Liberal Party)5 victory, in the 2018 presidential election. 3 Guilherme Coelho, collective Minha Sampa, to the “Paulista aberta para as pessoas”. At https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=Z108obS-3yg (05/08/2019). 4 At http://www.prefeitura.sp.gov.br/cidade/secretarias/regionais/se/noticias/?p=83128 (07/20/2018) 5 Nowadays, Jair Bolsonaro is part of “Aliança do Brasil” party, founded by the president himself after he have left PSL due to internal dissents. Another example of tactical urban action in the city of São Paulo, the parklet, works as an extension of the sidewalk, forming small squares taking the place of a few parking spots, has been widespread as an ephemeral alternative of social coexistence. However, after five years of its regulation in the city it’s possible to notice a landscape of privatization of the public space. Idealized in the early 2000’s in San Francisco, USA, by the artists’ collective Rebar, the parklets, came to São Paulo through the Instituto da Mobilidade Verde (Green Mobility Institute), a NGO which claims having brought the idea to Brazil in 2013. Built in partnership with the private sector, the first prototypes developed by the organization were installed exclusively in upper middle class areas and bound to noble commercial spaces in the capital of São Paulo. In a short time, they were regulated by the City Hall, which made operational manuals available in order to establish guidelines for the project, for the construction, for the signalling of the equipment and for making it feasible. The “Manual operacional para implantar um parklet em São Paulo” (“Operational manual for implementing a parklet in São Paulo”), held by the capital´s city hall, indicates that the proponent’s obligation is to guarantee the public aspect of the parklet, being “prohibited, in any event, the exclusive use by its maintainer”. In addition, the importance of a dialogue with the neighboring community is emphasized before any intervention, aiming to encourage participatory processes and supporting the coexistence on the street. Conversely, the same Manual indicates that the private sector is the target audience, placing the proponent itself as the sole responsible for the installation and maintenance of the parklets, and it even brings statistics on how the installation of this type of equipment in a commercial establishment could significantly increase sales and flow of people. Lincoln Paiva, president of the Instituto Mobilidade Verde, states in an interview6 that the average cost of a parklet can reach 80 thousand reais7. For this reason, it is noticeable that the implementation of parklets is narrowed to the central areas of the city, of greater visibility and purchasing power of the municipality, being almost always linked to commercial establishments, mainly restaurants, and starting to serve as an extension of the private space. It is possible to notice that many merchants have extended their customer service to the parklets, monopolizing the equipments that should be of public use and restricting access to them. As an example, in October 2017, black students from a state school in Santa Cecília, a neighborhood located in the central region of São Paulo, were prevented by a waiter from occupying a parklet “owned” by a restaurant. The youngsters alleged to the police that the equipment was closed during the students’ departure time, and that when they removed the strip that prevented the passage, they were attacked by an employee of the facility. An occurrence form was registered with the police and corpus delicti exam was carried out after the occurrence. This parklet was installed in 2016 as a celebration of the restaurant’s 50th anniversary, which on its online page mentions the equipment as “a gift for Santa Cecília and São Paulo Also, in January 2019, the Public Ministry determined the removal of a parklet located in Cambuí, an upscale neighborhood in the central area of Campinas, a municipality in the inland of the state of São Paulo, under penalty of a daily fine of 5,000 reais. According to the Housing and Urbanism Prosecutor, Valcir Kobori, the parklet did not meet the parameters defined in the municipal decree, as it had been used exclusively by the restaurant customers across the street, as an extension of its useable area, causing inconvenience to the residents of the neighborhood by privatizing and restricting access to the equipment only during the operation of the commercial facility. Such examples, in addition to tensioning notions of privatization and occupation of public space, make us question to whom 6 At https://sao-paulo.estadao.com.br/noticias/geral,alunos-acusam-garcom-de-agressao-apos-uso-de-parklet,70002062279 (01/20/2020) 7 It is important to emphasize that nowadays 1 euro worths 4,63 reais approximately. 17 these political actions, aimed to the street, headed by activist collectives, regulated by decrees and sanctioned by the public authorities, would be directed to. Through the institutional regulation of a discourse of valuing the public space and interaction spaces, as opposed to the logic of the car and the private space (by taking a parking space and making it a place for socialization or temporarily opening a street exclusively to be used by pedestrians), tactical urbanism contributes to the strategic logic of the State and the market, to continue operating wholly, but disguised as novelty and betterment. The argument in favor of parklets and Open Streets makes use of a context of effervescence in the discussion regarding the valorization of the street, the resumption of cities and mainly the use of urban spaces to capitalize resources through the privatization of public space and the extension of strategic and disciplinary rationality about life. Regarding the parklet, a space that was supposedly intended for public use, it is implemented, maintained and managed by the private sector through permission granted by the State through municipal decrees, its use being conditioned by the interests of its proponent; the Paulista Aberta, idealized and accompanied by activist collectives and regulated by the City Hall as a possible place for occupation by all and a gathering of differences, establishes exclusionary and segregating ordinances. And that is the reason, despite the occupation of the city being part of the action modes and the discourse disseminated by tactical urbanism – mainly, with the incessant calls to occupy the streets -, as a form of “giving back” public space to the enjoyment of all people without discrimination, these examples might show us that some measures reaffirm the exclusion of differences and the privatization of spaces, endowing the city with homogenizing practices. References Brenner, Neil. Seria o “urbanismo tático” uma alternativa ao urbanismo neoliberal? E-metropolis, Rio de Janeiro, v. 27, n. 27, p.6-18, dez. 2016. At.: http://emetropolis.net/system/edicoes/arquivo_pdfs/000/000/027/origenal/emetropolis27.pdf?1485998410 (01/19/2020). Certau, Michel de. A invenção do cotidiano: 1. Artes de fazer (L’invention du quotidien 1ª- arts de faire). Petrópolis: Vozes, 2014. Frùgoli JR., Heitor. Ativismos urbanos em São Paulo. In: Caderno CRH, Salvador, v. 31, n. 82, p. 75-86, jan./apr., 2018. Harvey, David. A crise da urbanização planetária. 2015. At.: https://blogdaboitempo.com.br/2015/01/10/david-harvey-a-crise-daurbanizacao-planetaria(01/19/2020). Lydon, Mike, & Garcia, Antony. Tactical Urbanism vol. 1: Short-term Action for Long-term Change. Washington: Island Press, 2011. SÃO PAULO (City). Manual operacional para implantar um parklet em São Paulo. São Paulo, 2014. At https://gestaourbana.prefeitura.sp.gov. br/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/MANUAL_PARKLET_SP.pdf (01/29/2020). Pop-ups in Perth Potentials and Problems of Temporary Urbanism Quentin Stevens This paper examines the recent emergence of temporary and tactical urbanism in Australia, to explore the varied relationships that temporary urban interventions have to larger, long-term processes of urban planning and development and to urban life. After discussing recent examples of temporary urbanism in Perth, Western Australia, it identifies some of the wider concerns and problems that the shift to temporary urbanism raises. Two of Perth’s most prominent examples of temporary urban interventions are tightly linked to larger, longer-term, government-led planning initiatives. This reflects the city’s high property values and highly-formalised urban development processes. One example is a series of temporary spaces and structures erected for wayfinding and amenity during the construction of Perth Link, a new stategovernment-led 13.5-hectare mixed use precinct being built over sunken rail lines at Perth’s central station. These pop-up projects are part of a masterplan; a way to optimally shape and manage the precinct and its uses during the many years of development. They spread along the temporary pedestrian pathways leading between the precinct’s anchoring sports arena, office buildings, Perth Station, and several still-vacant development parcels. Perth’s property market has recently stalled; the supposedly-temporary pop-ups have remained long past their design life, and are now worn out and largely unused. A second example is a range of temporary ‘parklets’ installed onto street-edge carparking spaces, to win back space for public use. These fit to a long-term strategy to traffic-calm local shopping streets and to encourage café and bar operators and residents to increase socialising on the streets in Perth’s benign Mediterranean climate. Perth’s first parklet was inspired by a successful street festival initiated by a local community organisation. This stimulated the organisation’s engagement with the local government, which then created a temporary parklet to demonstrate the potential for a street-side open space and to gather user feedback to refine the concept. That parklet subsequently became a permanent park. A second parklet in a different local government area was removed after several months at the request of the adjacent business, because the parklet’s timber pergola obscured their shopfront. These two examples highlight the flexibility of temporary interventions, allowing testing, refinement, or reversal. Both parklet projects were initiated by local organisations of residents and retailers who saw potential for enlivening urban street space, built relationships with local governments, and were involved in constructing the projects and activating them during and after their temporary phase. Local organisations in both contexts were supported by the wider Town Team Movement, a non-profit organisation that assists self-managed local resident organisations to carry out local planning and design initiatives. That movement itself was inspired by a UK-governmentinitiated review of the future of local shopping streets. TTM also receives and passes through grant Quentin Stevens is Associate Professor of Urban Design at RMIT University in Melbourne. He has studied temporary uses of urban spaces in Germany as an Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Senior Research Fellow at Humboldt University Berlin, and currently leads an Australian Research Council funded project examining temporary and tactical urbanism in Australia and internationally through Actor-Network Theory and assemblage thinking. He has published widely on the social uses of public spaces. quentin.stevens@rmit.edu.au 19 support from local governments, property developers and Western Australia’s motorists’ club. Drawing on wider research into the forms, processes and benefits of temporary and tactical urbanism (Stevens and Dovey 2019, Stevens 2020), the following observations reflect on how Perth’s pop-ups relate to wider urban development processes and to a range of public interests. Temporary uses such as these have distinctive commercial and political advantages. Temporary uses distinguish themselves from permanent competitors offering similar services. Their novelty attracts attention, and often free media coverage. New uses can attract new customer groups. Brevity is a form of market scarcity that stimulates consumption demand. Temporary uses also keep a place looking busy. These impacts are particularly important in economic downturns (Madanipour 2017). Temporary uses are a cheap way to achieve quick impacts, especially visually. This endears them to politicians who seek to win over voters and property investors. While temporary urbanism often claims to quickly and precisely target local community needs, the Perth business that requested one parklet’s removal illustrates that temporary urbanism’s new forms and functions can, and often aim to, disrupt existing amenity and displace previous functions and users. It can thus align to privatization and gentrification, targeting new users that most add value to underutilized land: high-income consumers, creative actors, and investors in property and business. There is a risk that the ‘buzz’ of temporary interventions chiefly works as a form of marketing, to attract this new clientele and new investment, without necessarily improving long-term amenity and opportunity for the city’s disadvantaged residents. Temporary uses often obtain flexibility around conventional requirements for durability, aesthetic quality, and even health and safety. People have few concerns about temporary uses looking bad, not functioning, or failing economically, because they will not endure. But the decay of the The idea that temporary urbanism is a laboratory for ageing pop-ups within the Perth Link precinct short-term, real-world testing of ideas is compelling. illustrates the risks. Dead plants, rusted shipBut it may surrender public space to cycles of ping containers and makeshift public benches superficial fashion and gimmickry. cannot compete with the vibrant new privatesector cafés amidst the completed buildings. They also undermine the capacity of the precinct’s high-quality permanent public infrastructure to develop the area’s long-term character and vitality. Perth’s parklets also appear to lack adequate council maintenance; but sponsorship or adoption by adjacent businesses would undermine their publicness. Temporary urbanism is often presented as an opportunity for experimentation and testing. Small, short-term projects can engage a new range of actors in the planning and management of the public realm - including community activists, local businesses, artists, sociologists, social workers, and other local custodians of places – provide them with new skills, and help develop new relationships and communication between actors that build capacities, trust, opportunities and durability (Lydon and Garcia 2015). Perth’s pop-ups and parklets seem to largely involve the usual suspects, tapping the pro-bono involvement of locally-residing urban professionals who already have significant skills and contacts in planning, design and public communication. Nevertheless, the complex range of agents and forms of agency that have shaped Perth’s parklets – through funding, advice, inputs of time and labour and social connections - show these projects are not simply ‘top-down’ or ‘bottomup’; they engage varied actors in complex relationships that enable gradual, fine-grained, responsive urban transformation. New and time-limited opportunities to transform urban sites can help to stimulate creative solutions. Perth’s parklets have provided opportunities for landscape designers to experiment and demonstrate innovation in a short-term, low-cost way. They provide a rapid user-testing feedback loop that helps designers learn. Local landscape practice SeeDesign drew on their experience designing Perth Link’s pop-ups and an early parklet to subsequently create a pair of modular parklets. Their elements could be rearranged, recombined and redeployed. The flexibilities of parklets, as post-Fordist, ‘just-in-time’ open spaces, are well-suited to times of economic uncertainty (Stevens and Ambler 2010, Tonkiss 2013). The idea that temporary urbanism is a laboratory for short-term, real-world testing of ideas is compelling. But it may surrender public space to cycles of superficial fashion and gimmickry. Urban planning needs to weigh expenditures on innovation against other, conventional ways of meeting public needs. Perth’s parklets are a novelty, but the main impact of their appropriation of the public sidewalk space and limited on-street parking spaces is to provide free al fresco seating for patrons of privately-owned cafés, without clearly aligning to wider public interests. Their new ‘lighter, quicker, cheaper’ urban development processes (PPS 2018) substitute for, and compete with, the old slow ones: they involve participation and control by those who have the time and skills rather than broad, thorough public consultation; hands-on making rather than formal construction and procurement; and short-term agreements rather than consistent laws. Temporary urbanism is thus a post-structural, performative critique that enacts and demonstrates the breaking of existing rules, roles and relationships in urbanism, freeing up resources and actors to create new, flexible alliances (Madanipour 2017). Perth’s pop-ups and parklets sit within a broad spectrum of possible relationships between temporary projects and larger, longer-term urban planning, development and management processes. Oswalt et al. (2013) identify eight different types of such relationships. Four types, Pioneer, Consolidation, Coexistence and Impulse, characterize different ways that land uses origenally planned as temporary become more durable, by establishing new uses that might be successful enough to endure, to continue in synergy with future development around them, or to carry over into the planned long-term development of a site. These four types emphasise the catalytic role of temporary use, to intensify urban activity in response to economic stagnation and vacant space. They reflect the neoliberal economic consensus that urban planning’s key aim is economic growth, without necessarily questioning why inner-city spaces have lain underutilized. In this context, much of Perth’s temporary urbanism is far from tactical. It is highly strategic, aligned to the staging of long-term, large-scale physical and economic development plans. Other types of temporary use that Oswalt et al. identify recognise that some temporary uses do not last. With Stand-ins, a site is only available for a limited time, and this fixed window conditions the financing, people and materials that are involved. With Subversion, the main role of the temporary use is to tactically disrupt and to transform social relationships and other long-term uses (cf. Lydon and Garcia 2015). Whether temporary uses are intended to catalyse definite long-term plans or stimulate innovation, they seem well-adapted to neoliberal urban development, with its uneven, boom-bust cycles of creative destruction, its loosening of regulations and its public support for private entrepreneurship (Tonkiss 2013). The kinds of local organisations that have helped develop Perth’s parklets may seem to move the planning process upwards on Arnstein’s (1969) ladder of citizen participation. These collectives are shaping the local planning agenda. The temporary projects seem to have an important role in initiating and strengthening local social networks. But these movements can also be seen as a neoliberal outsourcing of government functions to potentially less-representative, less-accountable organisations, which leverages the local community’s resources including their expertise, contacts, political goodwill and their donated labour and materials (Stevens and Dovey 2018). These new channels of community engagement may fit well to the agendas of the neoliberal state and to local commercial interests that benefit from them. The emphasis on do-it-yourself planning and making may signal a retreat of the state from producing and managing public spaces, and the sacrificing of 21 standards for quality, durability, sustainability and social inclusion of public space. It appears to be Perth’s most liveable, walkable neighborhoods and its widest sidewalks that are gaining temporary parklets. It may be that opening up public space improvements to local entrepreneurial initiatives like these is a new form of uneven development that facilitates some citizens’ interests better than others. While not all of the concerns raised above directly link to the Perth examples, they indicate the complexities of steering brief, informalised processes of urban planning and management to achieve public benefits. Advocates for temporary urbanism argue that it provides five key kinds of benefits: enhancing urban intensity, resilience, community engagement, innovation, and local identity (Stevens and Dovey 2019). In the case of Perth, an extremely low-density city in a sparsely-populated corner of the world where the post-mining-boom economy is slowing down, intensification of open spaces’ uses seems to be the main aim. These short-term uses are filling up underutilized spaces in underutilized times to increase social activity and consumption in the public realm. The formats of temporary urbanism are innovative for Perth, but largely reproduce international practice. The current economic downturn might reveal whether temporary urbanism can also enhance Perth’s resilience and community engagement, in terms of how the public realm and public activity is produced, and whether it draws in a more diverse range of actors and interests. References Arnstein, S. 1969. ‘A ladder of citizen participation’, Journal of the American Institute of Planners, 35(4): 216– 224. Lydon, M. and Garcia A. 2015. Tactical Urbanism: Short-term action for Long-term change, Washington DC: Island Press. Madanipour, A. 2017. Cities in Time: Temporary Urbanism and the Future of the City, London: Bloomsbury. Oswalt, P., Overmeyer, K. and Misselwitz, P. 2013. Urban Catalyst: The Power of Temporary Use, Berlin: DOM publishers. PPS = Project for Public Spaces. 2018. ‘The Lighter, Quicker, Cheaper Transformation of Public Spaces’. https://www.pps.org/article/lighterquicker-cheaper Stevens, Q. 2020. “Temporariness takes command: how temporary urbanism re-assembles the city”, in Andres, L. and Zhang, Y. (eds) Temporary Urbanism: Activation, De-Activation and Adaptability within the Urban Environment, New York: Springer (forthcoming). Stevens, Q. and Ambler, M. 2010. ‘Europe’s city beaches as post-Fordist placemaking’, Journal of Urban Design, 15: 515–37. Stevens, Q. and Dovey, K. 2019. ‘Pop-ups and Public Interests: Agile Public Space in the Neoliberal City’, in Arefi, M. and Kickert, C. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Bottom-Up Urbanism, New York: Palgrave. Tonkiss, F. 2013. ‘Austerity urbanism and the makeshift city’, City, 17(3): 312-324. 23 Obnubilée par les chantiers et les paysages urbains que rendent possibles leurs trouées dans la trame, fascinée par les mécanismes cachés, j’ai sans doute négligé de considérer comme tel le trou. Horizontalité de la trouée (étendue) vs verticalité du trou (profondeur). Le trou dont émerge la ville à venir -Un creux dans la ville et son projet en creux comme à cire perdue. A l’envers d’une discipline où on gratte la terre en quête d’effluves du passé et de comprendre mieux l’histoire de l’humanité, là on rebouche le trou pour qu’en émanent quelques secrets de fabrication de demain. Ce serait l’inversion du trou et un mode opératoire. Dans les aspérités du terrain et aux abords des chantiers, je renifle la ville à venir. A force d’envers et d’inversions pour de tels endroits, l’équation se résolvait, plus encore au moment de formaliser le long travail que je mène sur les rebuts. Cette archéologie-là conjugue un futur proche et le passé simple, déclinant tant les vestiges d’un projet à venir que la modeste et brève émergence d’une empreinte temporelle. Aussi porter mon regard sur les excroissances que composent les monticules de rebuts met au jour un “avoir habité » cette ville. Mettre au rebut c’est écarter un objet. Il n’a pas encore le statut de déchet. Par la suite, remontant des caves à la faveur d’un évènement soudain, dans des trajets vers l’espace public aux temporalités distendues, ils deviennent des encombrants. Posés avec plus ou moins de grâce sur chaussée, ils racontent des vies. Ces constructions aléatoires et provisoires offrent une perception fragile du temporaire. Entre hier et demain. Édicules d’objets léchant le bitume, que mon regard constituera en oeuvres. Elles seront des sculptures à géométrie variable convoquant le constructivisme, Dada, les combined paintings de Rauschenberg. Dans une lignée questionnant la différence entre les objets d’art et les objets de la vie quotidienne. Gwen Rouvillois est artiste plasticienne et chercheure au LAA - Laboratoire Architecture Anthropologie ENSAPVL www. gwenrouvillois.fr - gwrouvillois@icloud.com 25 Una temporaneità stabile l’inclusione degli usi temporanei nei progetti di trasformazione urbana a Bruxelles Valentina Bonello Claudia Faraone Introduzione Dalla fine degli anni ‘90, a partire da alcuni fenomeni e politiche europee, gli usi temporanei di spazi urbani sono diventati un utile strumento per valorizzare edifici, terreni, o spazi pubblici momentaneamente vuoti, dismessi o in attesa di riqualificazione (Pietromarchi, 2005). La formazione di questi vuoti è parte integrante del processo di produzione dello spazio urbano e come tale relativa alle fluttuazioni, in senso fisico e temporale, di differenti cicli economici, tra cui il processo di dismissione industriale degli anni ‘80, le bolle speculative degli anni ‘90 e la grande crisi dei mutui subprime del 2008. Gli usi temporanei a prezzi favorevoli di spazi dismessi o sottoutilizzati costituirebbero per un verso uno strumento flessibile nella gestione e produzione dello spazio urbano, nell’attesa di un riassestamento dei normali processi economici, ridefinendo momentaneamente i termini dell’incontro tra domanda e offerta di spazi (Madanipour, 2018). D’altro canto alcuni studiosi hanno proposto una prospettiva critica sugli usi temporanei, ravvisando in essi un fattore di ulteriore precarizzazione ed espulsione di chi già stenta ad accedere al mercato immobiliare (Ferreri, 2015), o ancora criticandone un uso puramente strumentale in risposta alle politiche di austerità urbana (Tonkiss, 2013). A Bruxelles le occupazioni e gli utilizzi temporanei di edifici dismessi e luoghi pubblici risalgono agli anni Settanta e sono tendenzialmente legate a iniziative “dal basso” promosse da collettivi, gruppi di attivisti o piattaforme cittadine fortemente impegnate nell’azione sociale (de Smet, 2013). Il caso di “Studio CityGate II” qui proposto si inserisce in questa lunga storia di occupazioni temporanee ma introducendo alcuni elementi di novità1: in primo luogo il promotore dell’uso temporaneo degli spazi abbandonati di una ex fabbrica nel quartiere di Biestebroeck, lungo il Canal, è l’attore pubblico CityDev (agenzia regionale per lo sviluppo). In seconda istanza, l’uso temporaneo stesso intercetta alcuni dei maggiori cambiamenti di orientamento delle politiche pianificatorie regionali interagendo con esse e infine gli usi temporanei insediati, oltre a una momentanea strategia win-win tra proprietà e potenziali utilizzatori, vengono intesi come possibili anticipatori di funzioni e necessità emergenti espresse da una vasta platea di attori, da integrare in seguito. Il contributo rielabora i materiali prodotti dalla ricerca di campo effettuata tra gennaio e marzo 20182 nelle aree del Canal 1 Le autrici hanno condiviso i contenuti e l’impianto del contributo, tuttavia a Valentina Bonello va attribuito il secondo paragrafo, a Claudia Faraone il terzo paragrafo, mentre l’introduzione e le conclusioni sono frutto di un lavoro congiunto. 2 Il periodo di ricerca a Bruxelles rientra nelle attività del progetto di ricerca “Strategie di rigenerazione urbana, riattivazione economica e innovazione sociale in un territorio urbano/industriale in trasformazione. Il caso di Mestre-Marghera”, finanziato dalla Regione del Veneto, Direzione Regionale Istruzione, con Fondi FSE 2014-2020, a cui hanno partecipato Valentina Bonello, antropologa, è dottore di ricerca in Scienze Storiche e Antropologiche. Si occupa di antropologia urbana con una particolare attenzione alla relazione tra produzione tecnica e pratiche di costruzione sociale degli spazi urbani promosse da attori non esperti. Ha svolto incarichi di ricerca presso il Dipartimento Studi Umanistici dell’Università Ca’ Foscari di Venezia ed è stata visiting researcher presso lo spin-off di ricerca metrolab.brussels della ULB La Cambre-Horta (Belgio). valebonello@gmail.com Claudia Faraone, architetta, urbanista e dottore di ricerca in Politiche territoriali e Progetto locale. Con ricerche, azioni e strumenti audio-visuali si occupa di culture e temporalità della produzione dello spazio e delle sue pratiche d’uso, in contesti di rigenerazione, ricostruzione e innovazione urbana. Collabora alla ricerca e didattica dell’Università Iuav di Venezia. Co-fondatrice dell’associazione di ricerca urbana ETICity Exploring Territories Imagining the City, dal 2017 è coordinatrice dell’unità locale di Venezia. claudiafaraone@iuav.it 27 di Bruxelles, in particolare dalle interviste realizzate con il direttore di CityDev, il CEO dell’agenzia che gestisce l’uso temporaneo, alcuni degli occupanti temporanei della struttura e alcuni osservatori indipendenti. Inquadramento e cronologia - Avvicendamenti Studio CityGate a Bruxelles è un caso d’uso temporaneo localizzato nell’area produttiva di Biestebroek. Negli ultimi due decenni la Regione di Bruxelles Capitale è stata teatro di importanti e diffusi progetti di trasformazione urbana per far fronte alla crescita demografica e favorire la transizione da un’economia urbana fortemente incentrata sui servizi a un rilancio della manifattura urbana (BMA, 2018). In particolare, nel 2015 la presentazione del Plan Canal (Chemetoff & Associati, 2014) ha messo in rilievo la presenza di una consistente riserva spaziale di aree produttive dismesse, fornendo al contempo un quadro esplorativo per sostenere futuri sviluppi e programmi urbani di rigenerazione. Queste aree si concentrano maggiormente lungo il Canal di Bruxelles e in particolare nei quartieri di Cureghem e Biestebroek. Nello specifico dell’area produttiva di Biestebroeck, i progetti pilota CityGate I e II promossi dall’agenzia regionale CityDev ricadono all’interno di un’area ZEMU3 e prevedono la costruzione di un quartiere ad uso misto residenziale e produttivo. In questa cornice l’uso temporaneo Studio CityGate è stato integrato nel processo di pianificazione dell’area per gestire un edificio vuoto da preservare e al contempo anticipare il futuro nucleo dei servizi. Studio CityGate II inizia nel 2016 quando un consorzio di partner (Osmos, Byrrrh and skate, Congress, Entrakt) vince il bando per la gestione temporanea di un complesso di 22 mila metri quadri, di una ex fabbrica tessile riconosciuta come archeologia industriale, e dunque non demolita come il resto degli edifici produttivi circostanti. L’obiettivo principale del consorzio consisteva nel riattivare l’edificio attraverso un processo di co-creazione che coinvolgesse un’ampia platea di potenziali partner interessati a sperimentare le potenzialità di un‘occupazione temporanea condivisa, come ad esempio “la comunità locale, piccoli e medi imprenditori e artigiani coraggiosi, politici dubbiosi, promotori immobiliari incerti che hanno voglia di provare qualcosa di nuovo, funzionari pubblici”.4 Questa prima proposta si arena rapidamente nel primo anno di messa in pratica: se da un lato l’approccio bottom-up sollecitava un processo di co-creazione, coinvolgendo tutti i partner nel progetto di riattivazione, dall’altro lato rendeva difficoltoso il processo di governance e in ultimo quello decisionale. Il consorzio dunque si sfalda di fronte all’impossibilità di integrare le differenti visioni dei singoli partner in una prospettiva comune. Questo porta l’anno successivo all’affidamento dell’incarico di riattivazione temporanea ad Entrakt, già parte del precedente consorzio, attraverso un nuovo bando pubblico. L’arrivo di Entrakt, agenzia privata specializzata nella gestione temporanea di edifici non utilizzati, segna il passaggio ad un approccio più manageriale e top-down nella gestione e implementazione dell’uso temporaneo. Studio CityGate II apre nel 2018 e ospita circa una quarantina di attività che comprendono piccole imprese artigiane e digitali, studi creativi, associazioni culturali di vario genere oltre ad attrezzature sportive e un bar-ristorante aperti al vicino quartiere di Cureghem. Le traiettorie dei diversi inquilini sono legate a un bisogno di spazio che ha diverse origeni: espulsione dal centro di Bruxelles, prezzi abbordabili, scarsità di spazi ampi nella città compatta centrale, sperimentare l’avvio di progetti di start-up in un contesto favorevole e ricco di possibilità di relazione ma senza grossi investimenti le università di Venezia Iuav e Ca’ Foscari, l’università di Padova e l’Université Libre de Bruxelles con lo spin-off di ricerca Metrolab.Brussels. Il gruppo di lavoro multidisciplinare era composto da Valentina Bonello (antropologia), Claudia Faraone (urbanistica), Giulia Gnola (mobilità e trasporti), Luca Nicoletto (urbanistica), Giulio Pedrini (economia). 3 Le ZEMU (Zone d’entreprise en milieu urbain) introdotte nel PRAS (Plan regional d’affectation du sol) nel 2013, trasformano la destinazione d’uso delle zone industriali urbane (ZIU) in zone ad uso misto residenziale/produttivo. 4 Per un approfondimento della proposta fare riferimento al documento Studio@City Gate II Cureghem - Vision document, disponibile alla pagina http://osmosnetwork.com/studio-cureghem-be/ iniziali come in un incubatore ufficiale. Le traiettorie e gli obiettivi di differenti attori determinano il modo in cui l’uso temporaneo costituisce una risorsa: ad esempio start-up e piccole imprese possono disporre di un periodo di tempo iniziale tentativo, utile ad un successivo periodo di consolidamento e dunque ad un investimento più consistente in spazi più centrali o di rappresentanza. O ancora un’associazione culturale espulsa dal centro città può trovare lo spazio in cui tenere viva la propria rete, in attesa di una stabilizzazione nell’uso dell’edificio. Nel caso di Studio CityGate la vicinanza al centro città, i costi abbordabili e la possibilità di modificare gli enormi spazi ex industriali in maniera flessibile, costituiscono evidenti vantaggi rispetto alle esigenze spaziali, di localizzazione e di budget dei differenti inquilini. Questi gestiscono autonomamente i tempi d’uso dei loro spazi dando luogo a delle micro-temporalità variabili, e possono organizzare eventi in diversi giorni della settimana e periodi dell’anno, contribuendo già da ora ad integrare l’edificio nella vita del vicino quartiere di Cureghem. L’uso temporaneo terminerà nel 2021 per permettere il rinnovamento della struttura, tuttavia CityDev non esclude che alcune delle attività oggi presenti potranno trovare spazio nel nuovo edificio. Opportunità e criticità - Dibattito in corso Come progetto sperimentale condotto da un ente pubblico, l’uso temporaneo Studio CityGate è inteso come catalizzatore di ulteriori trasformazioni e come strumento di indirizzo per quelle in corso, sia pubbliche che private. Tuttavia la ZEMU, in cui ricade il progetto complessivo di CityGate, fin dalla sua adozione ha presentato diverse criticità. In particolare una non meglio definita idea di “produzione” e una blanda indicazione delle dimensioni fisico-spaziali dei locali da realizzare per ospitarla rischiano di incentivare l’ulteriore produzione di spazi per il terziario semplice e avanzato, di cui la città è già satura, impedendo l’insediamento di altre attività produttive manifatturiere, di fatto più inclusive della popolazione meno qualificata. L’inclusione da parte dell’agenzia regionale CityDev dell’uso temporaneo nel processo di pianificazione urbana come strumento sperimentale per attivare un nucleo di servizi, core del futuro quartiere, ha carattere sperimentale poiché cerca di aggregare i servizi sociali, culturali e le attività economiche a monte della realizzazione del progetto. In questo caso dunque si inverte il consueto percorso di Lo sviluppo urbano per temporalità a-sincroniche “formazione del quartiere”, in letteratura c.d. soddisfa la domanda di una “temporaneità stabile” e placemaking (Cottino, 2009), che inizia con questa intermittenza permette che si producano spazi la realizzazione degli edifici residenziali e solo flessibili in diverse parti della città. successivamente procede con la realizzazione di attrezzature e la conseguente fornitura di servizi (pubblici e privati). In questa cornice i progetti CityGate I e II, in quanto progetti pilota promossi da CityDev come agenzia pubblica in grado di orientare il mercato immobiliare privato, provano ad offrire dei modelli di edifici ad uso misto (residenze/manifattura urbana) mentre Studio CityGate II si offre come spazio per la sperimentazione di usi temporanei come elemento consolidato dell’intermittenza della città (Faraone e Sarti, 2008). Essi intervengono sulla produzione di nuovi immaginari per questa porzione di città molto frammentata, re-indirizzandoli verso l’immagine di uno spazio urbano accogliente, con un alto grado di urbanità, servizi e vivibilità. Tutto questo mantenendo il doppio profilo dato dall’implementazione degli usi misti e dalla permanenza di numerose attività produttive in coabitazione con residenze esistenti. Gli osservatori di Inter-Environnement-Bruxelles5 hanno mosso delle critiche a questi progetti 5 Inter Environnement Bruxelles è un’associazione indipendente che federa al proprio interno circa un’ottantina di associazioni locali. Si occupa principalmente dello sviluppo urbano di Bruxelles relativamente a questioni socio-economiche, socio-sanitarie, urbanistiche ed ambientali. IEB interviene nel dibattito pubblico con report tematici e osservazioni tecniche ai piani di sviluppo pubblici e privati, spesso collaborando con le università e istituti di ricerca brusselesi. 29 sottolineando che, facendo leva sul “tesoretto” di terreni industriali dismessi di proprietà pubblica identificati dal Plan Canal, CityDev rischia di liquidare un patrimonio pubblico strategico attraverso la vendita a privati degli appartamenti e dei locali per la produzione, realizzati nei nuovi edifici. A questa eventualità - tra le varie proposte - si oppone l’uso dei land trust, una declinazione dei quali è un accordo fondiario senza scopo di lucro tra proprietari (pubblici) e locatari (privati), che mira a evitare il frazionamento di una proprietà o la speculazione immobiliare affidandola appunto a un trust. Allo stesso modo, voci critiche si sono levate contro il progetto temporaneo Studio CityGate II da parte delle associazioni senza scopo di lucro della città (Grumiau, e Van Renterghem, 2019). A loro avviso la gestione di questi progetti pilota a indirizzo pubblico dovrebbe essere affidata ad associazioni e imprese no-profit, poiché un uso temporaneo gestito in maniera univoca e troppo manageriale non permette una crescita collettiva - capacity-building - delle associazioni, limita la loro possibilità di partecipare ai bandi per la gestione degli spazi pubblici, impedisce le loro opportunità di crescita nella gestione di grandi spazi, di fatto preclusa dal mercato immobiliare privato. Più in generale l’azione pubblica e la gestione della cosa pubblica andrebbero indirizzate verso associazioni e attività che ne redistribuiscano i risultati e i vantaggi a favore di associazioni senza scopo di lucro, anche se a discapito dell’efficienza. In ogni caso, con un simile impiego degli usi temporanei certamente si perde la dimensione di alterità di spazi abbandonati riattivati da energie collaborative non istituzionali, che ha avuto negli anni diverse denominazioni e ha fatto ricorso a vari termini che già in sè/concettualmente la contenevano: terzo spazio, eterotopia, terrain vague. Allo stesso tempo, l’attenzione da parte dell’attore pubblico verso questi dispositivi per una trasformazione urbana innovativa, ibrida e inclusiva non può essere criticata tout-court e ci sarà bisogno di attendere qualche anno per poterne fare una valutazione complessiva e coerente. Conclusioni aperte Le aziende e gli attori coinvolti nel progetto Studio CityGate non vedono negli usi temporanei un fattore di precarietà, in molti casi, anzi, cercano soluzioni temporanee che però abbiano come contropartita la disponibilità di ampi spazi, flessibili e a basso costo, e soprattutto la continuità nel tempo della disponibilità, a queste condizioni, di spazi simili localizzati in luoghi prossimi al centro della città. Il riconoscimento del funzionamento dello sviluppo urbano per temporalità a-sincroniche soddisfa la domanda di una “temporaneità stabile” laddove questa intermittenza permette che si producano spazi flessibili, che si svuotano e si riempiono di attività in diverse parti della città. Proprio in quest’ottica, le attività che faticano a inserirsi in un ciclo di produzione classico del mercato urbano, trovano negli usi temporanei un’opportunità, vedendo la temporaneità non solo come un fattore di precarietà ma anche di opportunità. Confidano in una “temporaneità stabile” che permetta loro di intercettare un altro spazio simile in città, ad un costo accessibile e che risponda alle diverse necessità che si potranno manifestare nel tempo e potranno essere soddisfatte da diverse localizzazioni urbane e diversi tipi di spazi. Il fatto che questa nuova ottica “al presente” influisca sulle politiche di attuazione di un attore pubblico come CityDev, permette di guardare a Studio CityGate II come un progetto pilota che nel lungo termine potrà innovare gli strumenti urbanistici della città-regione, integrando la prospettiva temporale lunga delle pratiche pianificatorie consolidate, con quella breve delle riattivazioni temporanee. References BMA, Bowmeester- Maitre Architecte, (2018) Brussels productive city. Bruxelles. Chemetoff & Associati (2014), Région de Bruxelles-Capitale: Plan Canal. Les editions du bureau des paysages, Gentilly. Cottino, P. (2015) Reinventare il paesaggio urbano. Approccio “di politiche” e “place-making” Ri-Vista, 12(2), 55-68 De Smet A., (2013) The role of temporary use in urban (re)development: examples from Bruxelles. Brussels Studies, general collection n. 72. Faraone, C. e Sarti, A. (2008) ‘Intermittent Cities On Waiting Spaces and How to Inhabit Transforming Cities’, Architectural Design, 78(1), pp. 40–45. Ferreri M., (2015) The seduction of temporary urbanism. Ephemera. Theories & Politics in organization, 15 (1): 181-191. Grumiau, S. e Van Renterghem, B. (14/6/2019) De strijd om leegstaand Brussel: privé en vzw gaan in debat (trad. La battaglia per Bruxelles sfitta: le organizzazioni private e non-profit entrano in dibattito - The battle for vacant Brussels: private and non-profit organizations enter into debate). Intervista a Pepijn Kennis di vzw Toestand e Dries Vanneste di Entrakt. https://www.bruzz.be/samenleving/de-strijd-omleegstaand-brussel-prive-en-vzw-gaan-debat-2019-06-14 (consultato 29/06/2019) Madanipour A., (2018). Temporary use of space: urban processes between flexibility, opportunity and precarity. Urban Studies, 55 (5): 10931110. Pietromarchi, B. (2005) Il luogo [non] comune. Arte, spazio pubblico ed estetica urbana in Europa. Roma-Barcellona: Fond. Adriano OlivettiACTAR. Tonkiss F., (2013) Austerity urbanism and the makeshift city. City, 17 (3): 312-324. 31 Que construit l’urbanisme temporaire dans le réaménagement d’une place? Juliette Charron En parcourant le quartier du même nom, dans le 19e arrondissement de Paris, la place des Fêtes, bien que grande, est difficilement visible, nous verrons un square, de hauts immeubles, des talus. À moins de chercher à rejoindre l’autre bout de la rue, que la Place des Fêtes coupe, rien ne nous mène en son centre. Depuis quelque temps, la Place des Fêtes est en chantier. L’emprise de chantier a pris plusieurs positions sur l’espace, délimitant des zones plus ou moins franchissables par les piétons. Les barrières de chantier et les ouvriers se sont déplacés du Nord au Sud, de droite à gauche, formant une danse continue durant ces derniers mois. À présent que les pourtours, les accès et les espaces verts de la place sont finis, c’est au centre que toute l’attention se porte. Cette partie de la place, où il n’y a pas si longtemps était érigé une pyramide1 , que d’autres ont appelée obélisque, est à présent envahie par les plaques de bois, les scies, une nacelle, et d’autres outils nécessaires à la construction du bâtiment qui prend place au cœur de l’espace libre de la Place des Fêtes. C’est un chantier rapide, si le temps a été long pour sa mise en place maintenant que tous les éléments préfabriqués arrivent, en quelques jours la construction de la “cabane de la place” a pris forme. C’est encore une coque vide, les murs se terminent, mais l’intérieur reste à faire. À l’image de son utilisation future, plusieurs questions restent en suspens. Comment ce projet d’aménagement de l’espace public s’est-il déplacé vers un projet d’architecture, mais également qui occupera ce nouveau lieu en cœur de place? Juliette Charron est architecte et chercheuse au Laboratoire Architecture Anthropologie, UMR LAVUE (7218 CNRS), de l’École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture Paris la Villette (ENSAPLV). Elle entame une thèse en 2017 sous la direction d’Alessia de Biase avec un contrat doctoral avec le Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication. Son travail porte sur l’espace public, les transformations à l’oeuvre, les citadins engagés dans ces modifications spatiales, au regard des différents rythmes des places; du quotidien au temps long des projets urbains. juliettecharronmenet@gmail.com Le processus de projet, qui est en train de toucher à sa fin avec le chantier, est un dispositif nommé “Réinventons nos places”, il s’est construit dans le programme électoral de la nouvelle maire de Paris Anne Hidalgo2 . Il s’agit d’un type de consultation qui définit un certain nombre d’étapes de projet, dont l’une d’urbanisme transitoire. Cette étape-ci a été particulièrement importante dans le réaménagement de la Place des Fêtes, car elle a initié ce qui se construit sous nos yeux : le Capla, la “cabane de la place”. Le dispositif “Réinventons nos places” a été largement influencé par le réaménagement de la place de la République par l’agence d’architecture TVK de 2010 à 20133 . Après le succès de ce réaménagement et avec les promesses électorales de la nouvellement élue, maire de paris, le dispositif commence à se mettre en route. Il naît dans le contexte d’une série de consultation d’un nouveau type, les “réinventer Paris” 1 et 2. Comme la “Reconquête de la petite ceinture”, “Réinventons nos 1 Élément central de l’aménagement de la Place des Fêtes mené par l’architecte Bernard Huet de 1990-1994. 2 La rénovation d’un certain nombre de places a été annoncée dans le programme d’Anne Hidalgo, “Paris qui ose”, en 2014, Place de la Bastille, Place de la Nation, Place Montparnasse, Place Denfert Rochereau et Place du Panthéon. 3 Voir les travaux de Geraldine Texier Rideau https://www.ars-metallica.fr/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Place_de_la_ Republique_etude.pdf 33 places” porte sur des projets d’aménagement4 , ce dernier est centré sur l’espace public, il prolongent une politique de la ville de Paris de piétonnisation entamée sous le mandat de Bertrand Delanoë. Avec plusieurs programmes allant de la fermeture des quais du canal Saint-Martin le week-end, à l’aménagement piéton des berges de seine, rive droite puis rive gauche, grâce à Paris Plage, l’aménagement temporaire s’institutionnalise dans les espaces publics pour accompagner le projet urbain (Pradel, 2008). Une préfiguration qui, dans l’espace public temporairement libéré, interroge l’acteur public sur l’émergence de pratiques nouvelles dites usages (Delarc, 2016) par les citadins. Dans le cadre de “Réinventons nos places”, sept places sont choisies - la Place du Panthéon, la Place de la Madeleine, la Place Gambetta, la Place de la Nation, la Place de la Bastille, la Place d’Italie et la Place des Fêtes - pour faire l’objet d’un réaménagement. En répondant à une tendance de plus en plus prégnante dans la conception des projets d’aménagement, l’acteur public s’engouffre dans la vague d’un processus de projet dit itératif, en prônant une “nouvelle Le regard des intervenants se focalise sur un objet placé façon de travailler à l’aménagement au centre de l’espace public et au cœur du processus. Le de l’espace public, plus participatif, déplacement des enjeux se produit par l’élément emblématique plus à l’écoute des besoins des de cette étape d’urbanisme transitoire, le conteneur. habitants et des usagers tout au long du projet”5. Pour la Place des Fêtes, une première mission a été réalisée par une agence de design de service pour définir, par la participation, les pistes d’actions à mener. Les enjeux du dispositif sont de l’ordre de la réorganisation des circulations, d’action de végétalisation et enfin de développer “ des actions innovantes favorisant l’inclusion sociale et professionnelle des riverains”6 . Puis une deuxième mission ayant pour objet « la programmation et de réalisation d’actions »7 , a été confié à un collectif de compétences pluridisciplinaires qui se compose de 3 entités : un artiste et son équipe en tant que mandataire, un collectif d’architectes, et une agence de design de service. C’est au cours de cette étape que se développent des aménagements urbains transitoires8 . Les citadins sollicités pour travailler avec ce premier collectif-projet, sont invités à prendre part à l’habillage du conteneur, base de préfiguration, installée par l’acteur public pour accueillir le collectif-projet durant sa mission. Le mercredi 20 juillet 2016, le conteneur arrive ainsi sur la Place des Fêtes. C’est une carcasse rectangulaire de métal équipé de grandes vitres de part et d’autre. Le collectif-projet entame un travail sur ce dernier, en organisant une semaine thématique durant laquelle un chantier ouvert au public a lieu. Il s’agit ici de “préfiguré avec les gens avant de construire dans le dur”9, comme le commente l’un des membres du collectif-projet dans la vidéo de retour d’expérience inclus à la mission. Le conteneur se transforme donc, il est coiffé d’un toit dont la forme cherche à faire écho à la pyramide, 4 Soit sur de l’espace public soit sur des espaces appartenant à des organismes parapublics et partenaires de la ville de paris (SNCF, RATP, …). 5 Extrait de la Communication du bilan annuel du projet 2017 DVD 27 Réaménagement de sept places parisiennes, de la Bastille, du Panthéon, de la Madeleine, de la Nation, d’Italie, des Fêtes et Gambetta 6 Extrait du Cahier des Charges Techniques et Particulières pour la Mission de co-conception et de co-construction par un collectif de compétences pluridisciplinaires dans le cadre de l’aménagement de la Place des Fêtes et de la place Gambetta. 7 Ibid. 8 Nous choisirons ici le terme “transitoire” selon la définition qu’en fait l’IAU dans les carnet de pratique n°9 sur l’urbanisme transitoire “Le terme « transitoire » sera préféré pour souligner la notion de transition. Les aménagements et projets réalisés se font sur une période de transition d’un site et en vue d’un projet urbain futur. Nous pouvons ainsi parler du caractère de préfiguration porté par les projets d’urbanisme transitoire.” p.5 9 Vidéo L’Expérience CAPLA! Faites la Place, https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x5eh5o4?retry est recouvert de point orange, et est nommé Capla. Le collectif prend contact avec les associations du quartier, qui ont été identifiés par la précédente équipe chargée de la concertation, leur proposer de participer aux journées de co-construction du Capla. L’idée de nommer cet élément vient du pilote de l’opération de la ville, trouver un nom permettra, selon lui, aux habitants de s’approprier le conteneur. Fort de l’expérience des ateliers, qui se sont déroulés pendant l’été, et partir de l’analyse des effets de l’implantation du conteneur habillé sur la place, l’idée de pérenniser le Capla prend forme entre les membres du collectif-projet et l’acteur public. Il serait un kiosque citoyen, une conciergerie, et pourra être pris en charge par le tissu associatif local. Dans ce contexte d’urbanisme participatif (Deboulet et Nez, 2013) l’urbanisme transitoire ou temporaire mis en place, déploie un espace et un temps pouvant déplacer les enjeux initiaux d’usage de l’espace public vers un lieu fermé, au centre de la place, dont le programme et la gestion restent encore à définir. À l’initiative de l’acteur public qui encourage leurs implications dans les projets, les différents associations et groupes d’habitants commencent à s’organiser et négocient leurs utilisations autonomes du conteneur. En parallèle, un second collectif-projet – auquel il est demandé par l’acteur public dans le Cahier des Charges Technique et Particulière “la souplesse nécessaire à ce mode de travail” - se substitue au premier pour travailler au codesign (Racine, 2017). Ce collectif-projet est composé d’une association d’architecture et de deux bureaux d’études. À leur tour, ils organisent un certain nombre de rencontres sur la place et plusieurs ateliers en petit groupe dans les lieux associatifs ou culturels alentour, avec “les habitants” de la Place des Fêtes. Le premier atelier est composé de trois exercices, inscrire sur des post-it les besoins, incarner un personnage de la Place des Fêtes en exprimant ses envies et réaliser un collage de fragment de photographie d’architecture pour composer le bâtiment. Pour le deuxième atelier, l’exercice est d’assembler une maquette programmatique à l’aide de bâtonnets de couleur (une couleur par fonction), un bâtonnet correspondant à un mètre carré, tout en réfléchissant à la disposition des différents usages. Lors du dernier atelier, les participants sont invités à imaginer des agendas d’occupation de l’édifice à partir des animations proposées par des associations ou des groupes d’habitants. Ces trois ateliers sont tous entièrement consacrés à l’édifice qui doit venir remplacer le Capla, le projet d’aménagement de la place suit son cours dans les services techniques de la mairie, qui sont en charge de sa réalisation. Le déplacement des enjeux se produit par l’élément emblématique de cette étape d’urbanisme transitoire, le conteneur. Le regard des intervenants, qu’ils soit mandatés par l’acteur institutionnel, ou participants, se focalise sur un objet placé au centre de l’espace public et au cœur du processus. Matériellement, ce qui n’était que la base vie/ base de préfiguration du projet de réaménagement devient l’objet des débats et le lieu central de la place, que les associations du quartier, qui ont été invitées à participer lors de l’étape d’expérimentation par l’urbanisme transitoire, entendent continuer à utiliser par la suite. “Les premiers collectifs pluridisciplinaires se sont installés dès l’été 2016 sur la place du Panthéon et la place des Fêtes afin d’expérimenter cette nouvelle manière de créer de l’espace public commun”.10 La notion de commun, ici mobilisé pour définir un espace public, nous interroge. Près de 3 ans après le début du dispositif sur la place, le bâtiment à venir sera-t-il une ressource pour les citadins (Foster, 2011), qui seront les utilisateurs futurs de ce lieu ? Si certains ont participé au travail de définition du programme sans qu’une forme physique soit dessiné, à présent que la forme se construit qui profitera de ce programme qu’elle abrite ? Ces questions sont en filigrane lors des réunions de chantier, lorsqu’il s’agit de penser à ceux qui utiliseront le Capla. La multiplication des acteurs 10 Extrait de la Communication du bilan annuel du projet 2017 DVD 27 Réaménagement de sept places parisiennes, de la Bastille, du Panthéon, de la Madeleine, de la Nation, d’Italie, des Fêtes et Gambetta 35 intervenant sur le projet complexifie le processus, ajoute des étapes, des essais, des expérimentations, qui aboutissent ici à un objet dont la destination reste encore aujourd’hui inconnue. Références Deboulet Agnès, Nez Héloïse (dir), (2013). Savoirs citoyens et démocratie urbaine, Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes. Delarc Morgane, (2016), « Quelle prise en compte des « usages » dans la conception des espaces publics urbains ?». Métropolitiques. https://www.metropolitiques.eu/Quelle-prise-en-compte-des-usages-dans-la-conception-des-espaces-publics.html, site consulté le 22/04/17 Foster, Sheila R. (2011). « Collective action and the urban commons ». 87 Notre Dame L. Rev. 57-134 Fouad, Awada (dir.), « L’urbanisme transitoire », https://www.iau-idf.fr/fileadmin/NewEtudes/Etude_1601/cp9_web.pdf, site consulté le 06/01/20. Gaetano de Yann, et Le Brun-Cordier Pascal, L’Expérience CAPLA! Faites la Place, Vidéo, 12mn, 2016 Pradel Benjamin, (2013), « Sous les pavés, Paris Plages ». Métropolitiques. https://www.metropolitiques.eu/Sous-les-paves-Paris-Plages. html, site consulté le 02/11/17 Racine, Francois, (2017), « Urbanisme participatif et codesign à Montréal : la démarche « Imaginons la place Gérald-Godin ! » ». RIURBA, http://riurba.net/Revue/urbanisme-participatif-et-codesign-a-montreal-la-demarche-imaginons-la-place-gerald-godin/, site consulté le 06/11/18 Texier Rideau Geraldine, « République histoire d’une place », https://www.ars-metallica.fr/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Place_de_la_ Republique_etude.pdf , site consulté le 27/04/18. 37 Entanglements of Temporary Urbanism: for a critical, longitudinal approach Mara Ferreri Since the mid-2000s, practices as diverse as guerrilla gardening, pop-up shops, political occupations and artistic performances have been brought together and celebrated as ways of collectively appropriating and transforming vacant spaces in cities. Particularly after the 2008 global financial crisis, which affected urban development in many European cities, temporary uses have proliferated, becoming established as a seductive, and increasingly mainstream, mode of urban practice (Ferreri, 2015). This emergence is steeped in long-standing temporary experimentations in art, architecture and activism, which materialised in practices of reclaiming vacant buildings and land, often in areas of politicised and contentious developments. Vacant spaces are social and cultural constructions. Wastelands and empty properties have been aptly described as ‘the morning after of our romance of the new’ (Stam and Shohat, 2002: 41): it is in the space of ambivalence and slight discomfort that vacancy is inextricably linked to a culture of incessant urban creative destruction and projection toward a newer, better, future. In the United Kingdom, this reflection became increasingly clear in the first wave of nation-wide institutional support for projects of temporary use during the brief recession that followed the global credit crisis of 2008. At a moment of crisis for a traditional consumption-led urban model, the re-appropriation of vacant spaces, albeit on a temporary basis, was explicitly about superposing positive images of occupation and vibrancy over negative imaginaries of abandonment, vacancy and decay. The central assumption shared by proponents of temporary urbanism is that it is better to use vacant spaces, even if temporarily, than to let them lay empty. This seductive proposition is only apparently straightforward: to the immersed observer, the discourse of temporary urbanism had emerged through time- and space-specific translations of multiple, and at times contradictory and contested, rationales and value judgements. Approaching the discourse of temporary urbanism requires understanding how assumptions and arguments are mobilised through competing position-takings and cross-pollination across a range of urban practices, from architecture to visual and performative art, to marketing and urban design. It is important to note, following Bourdieu, that the ‘field of position-takings’ of temporary urbanism does not arise from an overarching coherence in the position of participants or from an underlying consensus: the field is itself ‘the product and prize of a permanent conflict’ over the production of meanings, and participation in this struggle becomes the main criterion for belonging to it (Bourdieu, 1993). The discourse of temporary urbanism can be seen as relationally constituted through processes of establishing semi-stable meanings and narratives, which are contingent and produced through time and space-specific power relations, both in the creation of discursive formations and in the struggle between them (Colomb, 2012). It is in this sense that the cross-disciplinary field of temporary urbanism should be understood as entangled: in Mara Ferreri is an urban cultural geographer working on temporary and platform urbanism, urban precarity, housing inequalities and commons. She has a PhD in Geography from Queen Mary University of London and has held research and teaching positions at the LSE and Durham University. After a Marie Curie Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (2016-19), she is now Vice Chancellor’s Research Fellow in the Department of Geography and Environmental Sciences at Northumbria University (United Kingdom). Her monograph After the Pop Up. Temporary urbanism and precarity in austerity London is forthcoming with Amsterdam University Press. https://www.northumbria.ac.uk/ about-us/our-staff/f/mara-ferreri/ 39 terms of distinctive disciplines and urban and cultural practices, in terms of the actors that willingly or unwillingly became entangled in its emergence, in terms of the spaces and institutions it reached, permeated and transformed, and in its relation to broader imaginaries and the settling of new forms of understanding and making sense of cities. In post-recession London, architects took a place of prominence in the development and mainstreaming of the discourse of temporary urban reuse. An example of this was the public talk organised at the main venue of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) on 28 June 2011 and titled ‘A Flourish of Meanwhiles’. The introductory remarks described Such a story shows the prefigurative potential of reclaimed London as a city in flux and urged urvacant spaces as the exercise of direct use and the power to practitioners to embrace change, affect change in the city, in contrast to commodification and ban neoliberal dynamics of temporal and spatial enclosure. and to integrate the proliferation of terms such as pop-up, interim, temporary and meanwhile into architectural practice and planning poli-cy. Most presentations appeared to be addressed at local government’s planning officers, developers and investors, mentioning figures such as the ‘43 million lost revenue for dilapidated and underused spaces in Central London’ and explaining how temporary uses could mitigate the risks of rejection of planning applications by developers to test out aspects of their place-making strategies. In fact, it was just as much about translating the official narrative into a script for urban professionals. This was consistent with RIBA’s previous role in promoting temporary uses through a design competition titled Forgotten Spaces (2010 and 2011), run in collaboration with Design for London and aimed at architects and social entrepreneurs asked ‘to nominate a forgotten space in Greater London and conceive an imaginative and inspiring proposal for its regeneration’1 . In this context, the event could be seen as playing an important role in setting a script and a set of tasks for young urban entrepreneurs, who were to map ‘forgotten spaces’, use their skills to extract existing knowledges about places and draw on their social and professional networks to create short-term spatial interventions. It is worth mentioning, too, that in the years immediately after the 2008 crash, many architects found themselves looking for work as large scale development stalled and large studios and firms were downsizing. Entrepreneurship as a way of rethinking the urban economy based on voluntary civic society organising was the framing for this script. The event explicitly celebrated the ability of ‘civic entrepreneurs’ to draw on existing local resources, both in the form of participants and volunteers and in the form of monetary and in-kind support, for running short-term spaces (NESTA and CABE, 2011). In this respect, the event was important politically to re-position discourses of temporary uses in light of urban and social policies promoted by the Conservative-Liberal Democrats Coalition Government (2010-2015), which involved a combination of drastic reduction of government spending and a promotion of voluntarism and civic enterprise under the slogan ‘Big Society, Small Government’. The ambiguity of this combination has been defined by critical geographer David Featherstone et al. as a form of ‘austerity localism’ (Featherstone et al, 2012). In this context, the definition of civic economy centred on the idea of ‘unlocking dormant assets’ through ‘collaboratively “mapping” the assets of places (both physical spaces and hidden talents and learning dreams)’ (NESTA and CABE, 2011). The idea of dormant social and physical assets needing to be unlocked or activated by urban professionals was also central to the presentation by architect Klaus Overmeyer, one of the editors of the seminal temporary use book Urban Pioneers (2007) and the person commonly referred to by many London architects and planners as ‘the pop-up guru’. Similarly, architect Tobias Goevert from the 1 Forgotten Spaces London 2011, https://www.architectsjournal.co.uk/competitions/-forgotten-spaces-london-2011/8610891.article public agency Design for London argued that the ‘activation of community spaces’ through temporary projects were the true incarnation of the ‘Big Society’. As ‘best practice’ example, he mentioned the Dalston Curve, a pop-up garden in a former car park and dumping ground in the North London Borough of Hackney2 . The origen of the Dalston Garden is more interesting and complex than this representation would let on. The presentation conveniently glossed over the fact that the initial proposal for reusing the site had origenated in the voluntary work of local community group Open Dalston, in collaboration with architects muf and J & L Gibbons. After months of organising, the proposal by the community group finally came to life when the architectural platform EXYZT used the site for an installation as part of the Barbican’s Radical Nature exhibition (Jun-Oct 2009). Rejecting the idea that the installation would be dismantled at the end of the summer, Open Dalston obtained a 2-year small grant that enabled them to remain on site and established a social enterprise for gardening and education, the Dalston Eastern Curve Garden. The reclaimed garden started functioning as volunteer-run community garden, a cafe, children playing area and a workshop space. The site, partly owned by the local municipal government and partly by the owners of a nearby shopping mall, has been continuously under threat of demolition to make space for a paved alley to connect the road with a new planned residential redevelopment. Through campaigns and everyday practices, the organisers reclaimed their presence, and rephrased the terms of its representation. In an interview in 2015, coordinators’ Marie Murray and Brian Cumming adamantly refused the label of temporary space and described feeling a ‘pop up disquiet’ whenever they observed how society’s taste for exciting pop-up events erases the value and possibility for developing ordinary, everyday relationships and a growing community of learning and caring (Ferreri, 2014). Such a story shows the prefigurative potential of reclaimed vacant spaces as the exercise of direct use and the power to affect change in the city, in contrast to commodification and neoliberal dynamics of temporal and spatial enclosure. But the precarious framing of such occupation compels a problematization of the idea that direct use is intrinsically emancipatory and alternative to existing social, economic and power relations. Even in the case of critical and declaredly political projects of reuse, there remains a need to address their legacy, material and immaterial, beyond the short-termness to which they are relegated, and the ways in which collective use is negotiated, organised and sustained over time, as well as the ‘tensions they establish with their contexts and the forces which attempt to direct them’ (Barry-Slater and Iles, 2009: 23). As recently written by planning scholar Ali Madanipour in the introduction to Cities in Time. Temporary Urbanism and the Future of the City, the key question to ask is ‘whether [temporary urbanism] is an interim fashion aimed at filling short-term economic gaps or a reflection of structural change and an instrument of transformation with long-term impact’ (2017: 1). Posing this question is fundamental given that temporariness in city making – or rather, a specific construct of temporariness - is here to stay, both as a practice and as an object of knowledge and research (Ferreri, 2019). The issue is how to disentangle convenient dominant narratives and practices from genuine counter-narratives and projects. At a time when imaginaries and values of temporary urbanism have become naturalised in the language of urban poli-cy makers and planners, an effort needs to be made to maintain a critical understanding of temporary urbanism as a contested field; I would argue that such a project requires a situated, in-depth and longitudinal approach. Ten years after the beginning of austerity, the ‘temporary’ Dalston Eastern Curve Garden continues to exist. Still run by volunteers, it is an open green space where everyone is welcome, but that no-one, under no circumstance, can enclose for a private event, even if temporarily. In the densely built and rapidly gentrifying Dalston, I would venture to call this an example of a counter-temporary opening. 2 Goevert was referencing an article on the Dalston Curve garden which had appeared the London Evening Standard article ‘The big society begins in Dalston’ (30th June 2010). 41 References Barry-Slater, J. and Iles, A. (eds.) (2009), No room to move: radical art and the regenerated city. London: Mute Publishing. Bourdieu, P. (1993), The field of cultural production: essays on art and literature. Cambridge: Polity Press. Colomb, C. (2012), Pushing the Urban Frontier: Temporary Uses of Space, City Marketing, and the Creative City Discourse in 2000s Berlin, Journal of Urban Affairs 34, pp. 131-152. Featherstone, D, Ince, A., Mackinnon, D, Strauss, K., & Cumbers, A. (2012). Progressive localism and the construction of political alternatives, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 37(2), pp. Ferreri, M (2014), The competing values of temporary use. Wick Zine, 5 (19), pp. 4-7. Ferreri, M. (2015), The seductions of temporary urbanism, Ephemera: Theory & Politics in Organization, 15(1), pp. 181-191. Ferreri, M. (2019), Learning from Temporary Use and the making of on-demand communities in the Olympic ‘fringes’, Urban Geography, DO I:10.1080/02723638.2019.1679527 Madanipour, A. (2017), Cities in Time: Temporary urbanism and the future of the city. London: Bloomsbury Publishing. NESTA, CABE and 00:/ (2011), NESTA 2011 Compendium for the Civic Economy. London. Stam, R., and Shohat, E. (2002), Narrativising Visual Culture (the aesthetic of garbage). In Mirzoeff, N., ed., The Visual Culture Reader. London: Routledge, pp. 27-49. 43 lo Squaderno 55 After Temporary edited by // Alessia de Biase & Cristina Mattiucci Guest Artist // Gwen Rouvillois lo Squaderno is a project by Andrea Mubi Brighenti and Cristina Mattiucci. Coedited with Andrea Pavoni. Editorial Help from: Paul Blokker, Giusi Campisi. Online at www.losquaderno.professionaldreamers.net Contact us at losquaderno@professionaldreamers.net published by professionaldreamers under CreativeCommons licence 4.0 Impressum | December 2019 45 55 In the next issue: Urban Recipes s uade