Future(s) Perfect: uchronian mapping as method for critical urban research

This article explores a way of representing possible uses (of temporarily vacant land) that disrupt or challenge linear understandings of urban development. The case study of a 'uchronian map' of Hackney Wick and Fish Island explores a critical cartography of the multiple and contradictory visions and hopes that are mobilized by the act of using a vacant space. Temporary uses to open up (physically, symbolically) urban possibilities. A critical element is the tension between temporariness as associated with process-based, experimental and open projects, on the one hand, and temporariness as place marketing and precarious, symptomatic of the ever-increasing foreclosure of alternative spaces in the city.