7-10 NOVEMBRE 2012
Facultat de Geografia i Història - Universitat de Barcelona
Dimecres 7/11/2012
Dijous 8/11/2012
Divendres 9/11/2012
Dissabte 10/11/2012
Unstable Places: an Analysis of theMultiple Temporalities of Urban Change
Senior Lecturer, Sociology and Communications (monica.degen@brunel.ac.uk)
Abstract
Space and time lie at the centre of discussions of urban change. While there has been extensive research on the transformation of the material landscape, in particular on “the form and character of new urban spaces and the broader socioeconomic impacts of projects on communities living in and around development areas” (Raco et al 2008:2652), the discussion of the manifold temporalities shaping and moulding the physical change of a neighbourhood have been limited and underresearched (Raco, Henderson & Bowlby 2008; Fitzpatrick 2004). Research on urban change and transformation has a tendency to examine a point in time of a long term process. Drawing on a fifteen year longitudinal study of el Raval neighbourhood in Barcelona, this article considers the multiple, fluid and superimposed temporalities that unfold over the lifetime of a regeneration project. I suggest that different timescapes: planning time; lived time; material time and imagined time fold together in the making of space. This has implications for the ways in which the aims or targets of urban renewal process are enforced and lived on a everyday level. While elements of control, discipline and gentrification might be in place, the temporal dynamics destabilise their implementation to be only partial in their imposition.
