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Activity Funded

Intermittent City: Temporary Uses and Sharing Practices to support and Adaptive Urban Space

Cidade Intermitente. Usos Temporários e Práticas de Partilha para um Espaço Urbano Adaptativo

Reference
2022.01558.PTDC
Project Start Date
2023-03-12
Project End Date
2025-03-11
Principal Investigator
Coinvestigator
Scientific Area
Humanities
Funding Program
Concurso de Projetos de I&D em Todos os Domínios Científicos - 2022 - PEX

Abstract

Along with the political, socio-economic and technological changes that emerged in the new millennium, cities have been under significant changes. Values of temporariness and sharing have appeared in different dimensions of the public life, driving urban transformations and disrupting conventional relations between space, time, and use. New and unconventional dynamics, with countless articulations, are taking shape: different expression of housing (co-living, temporary accommodation); new forms of working (co-working, homeworking); shared mobility (bike-sharing, car-sharing, pedi-bus); sharing of goods (creative commerce, collaborative consumption, community food) and services (Netflix, Spotify), both physically or through digital platforms; spontaneous cultural events; unexpected uses in anonymous spaces (parties in abandoned structures; terraces in parking spaces; urban agriculture in vacant lots), etc. All these urban dynamics that enable and empower temporariness and sharing in the urban spaces, it is what we call Intermittent Practices (IP). Interfering with both public and private scope, IP emerge as sites established through transitory actions which define spaces, goods and services to be shared, replacing traditional practices, such as the property or the permanent uses. Recently, in the fight against Covid 19, many of these IP have become tools of experimentation and appropriation of urban spaces, both by individuals affected by the crisis, and the government structures that came to perceive this practice as a –low cost and immediate– form of action. Thus, we witness a new functional mechanism of the city with the potential to generate new architectures and new ways of living and designing urban space, but whose practices –occurring in a pulverised way, through diverse logics, and not always measurable by the conventional architectural discourse– prove the need to evolve more nuanced discussions on the nature of a city and its planning. Addressing this complex reality, the project “Intermittent City: Temporary Uses and Sharing Practices to support and Adaptive Urban Space" will work on creating a bridge between research and action. Based on case studies and operative initiatives, it will propose design tools and methods that drive urban changes using IP as catalysts, encouraging an adaptive city. To explore this argument, the project considers IP in the Municipality of Lisbon as a research object to: 1) systematise its features and rationales, 2) assess its structural components and impacts, and 3) contribute with a design-oriented perspective on future urban changes. The choosing of Lisbon as privileged laboratory is justified by its functional diversity, complexity and rich occurrence of different IP types in various sectors of urban life. The project is implemented through a research flow in which three stages sequentially developed in time are in permanent interaction and feedback between the research’s object (Lisbon’s IP), conceptual core (IP’s transformative capacity) and a continuous ring of communication with partners and society: 1) SWITCH ON (Recognition and Mapping): a systematised open-access, online archive of Lisbon’s IP with a focus on relevant case studies, its features and processes; 2) CONNECT (Analysis and Discussion): an interdisciplinary assessment of the intermittent case studies impacts, synergies and potential to transformative actions in the city; forming the Intermittencies Circuit; 3) LIGHT UP (Future Scenarios and Forward-looking Tools): a design-oriented prospect in which future scenarios of urban transformation, resulting from IP, are proposed, tested, and incorporated in the creation of urban design tools. Intermittent City benefits from a long-lasting partnership between FA.ULisboa and the Municipality of Lisbon and the Directorate-General for Territory, coupled now with Start-up Lisbon and DLBC Lisbon Network, guaranteeing the immediate transfer of their contents to local, national urban policies and enabling a bridge with European projects. In line with the multidimensional nature of the challenge, the project team brings together researchers from different disciplines and specialisations with a broad experience in national and international funding. Specific expertise in public policy, research-by-design, and stakeholder-based research is further enhanced with the involvement of a diverse body of consultants with wide –theoretical and practical– experience on the subject. This project is a pilot for urban innovation initiatives and reveals a direct practical impact, justifying the FCT support. Cities are dealing with new forms of use of space and activities, further drastically driven by the COVID 19 pandemic. Systematisation is needed, as well a new production of knowledge and tools to face these new realities: which are its consequences? Which opportunities are we facing? Which new risks and exclusions might come with them?

Institutions

Main Institutions

  • Universidade de Lisboa Faculdade de Arquitectura (FA)

Other Institutions

  • COFAC, Cooperativa de Formação e Animação Cultural, CRL (COFAC)
  • Universidade da Beira Interior (UBI)

Funding 49.992,28 €

Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) - Portugal

49.992,28 €