Place Temporality: Time, Rhythm and Urban Design

This book departs from concerns on the acceleration of cities, and its impact on the urban quality of life and the livelihood of its spaces. For that, it starts by questioning what actually influences the sense of time, and how this expresses itself in urban environment. Then it elucidates on the value of the everyday sense of time and rhythmicity in urban space, and explores on how urban designers can understand and ultimately play a role in the creation of temporally unique, both sensorial and affective, places in the city. This book is about the temporal aesthetics of places in the city, in particular, the importance of the ‘everyday sense of time’, and consequently, ‘rhythm’ in the urban environment: a) how they influence the perceived quality, and as such, patterns of wellbeing and engagement in urban spaces, and b) their role in the process of designing experiential quality in the city. An alternative perspective / a new aesthetics Whilst focusing on urban place-temporality, the book defies conventional urban design perspectives on the aesthetics of urban places and the environment, which at the hangover of modernism, predominantly focus on Kantian “spatial beauty”, the visual dimension and the materiality of space. Instead, it brings forward an alternative approach to the aesthetics of place, looking at urban spaces through the filter of time and rhythmicity, and with it experience, sensoriality and performativity. It explores the everyday sense of time as an indicator of quality in urban space, and how everyday rhythms of social life, nature and physical space, shape meaningful temporal experiences in city spaces. A new agenda for ‘Temporal urban design’ The book is about the sense of time, its performance and affective qualities in urban space, and why and how urban designers can tangibly approach it by design. Overall the book sets up a new agenda for “Temporal urban design”. It claims that if one wants to design effectively for people and society and in response to nature and space, and is concerned with the everyday wellbeing and health in urban space, then the focus must be on the inherent temporal identity of places and its social, nature and physical rhythmicity, and with it, its patterns of performance, sensorial and affectiveness through time. The physical form of the urban public realm is only one aspect; it provides the scenery and condition for the actual forms of places that are perceived in motion and through time. The actual forms of places are ephemeral, temporal, and specifically rhythmical: the forms of people, nature, and society in space. This asks for both conceptual and methodological innovation within the urban design discipline.