The entanglements of Temporary Urbanism: for a critical, longitudinal approach

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). The article argues for a critical, longitudinal approach to studying this emergence as steeped in long-standing temporary experimentations in art, architecture and activism of reclaiming vacant buildings and land, often in areas of politicised and contentious developments.