Intermittent City
Temporary Uses and Sharing Practices to support an Adaptive Urban Space
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, co-housing, temporary accommodation); new forms of working (co-working, homeworking, work from anywhere); shared mobility (bike-sharing, car-sharing, pedi-bus); sharing of goods (creative commerce, collaborative consumption, community food) and services (platforms such as Netflix, Spotify), both physically or through digital programs; spontaneous cultural events; unexpected uses or between 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. Addressing it, the project “Intermittent City: Temporary Uses and Sharing Practices to support and Adaptive Urban Space” works on creating a bridge between Research and Action. It aims to propose design tools and methods to drive urban changes using Intermittent Practices as resource/catalysts, to encourage more adaptable cities. It is implemented through three stages:
1) SWITCH ON – Recognition and Mapping: a systematised open-access, online archive of Lisbon’s Intermittent Practices with a focus on relevant case studies, its features and processes;
2) CONNECT – Analysis and Discussion: an interdisciplinary assessment of the Intermittent Practices impacts, synergies and potential to transformative actions in the city;
3) LIGHT UP – Future Scenarios and Forward-looking Tools: a design-oriented prospect in which future scenarios of urban transformation resulting from Intermittent Practices are proposed, tested, and incorporated in new urban design tools.
Intermittent City purposes direct practical impact. Cities are dealing with new forms of use of space and sharing activities, further drastically driven by the COVID 19 pandemic. Systematisation is needed, as well as tools to face these realities: which are its consequences? Which opportunities are we facing? Which new risks and exclusions might come with them?
Team
Rita Ochoa (IR), Alessia Allegri (co-IR), João Pedro Costa (CIAUD.FA.ULisboa), André Barata Nascimento (Praxis.UBI), David Vale (CIAUD.FA.ULisboa), Inês Andrade Marques (Cow.ULHT). Scholarship: Matteo Cappello (Roma La Sapienza/UrbinLab).
Partners
CML Câmara Municipal de Lisboa, DGT Direção Geral do Território, DLBC Desenvolvimento Local de Base Comunitária, Start up Lisboa.
Advisors
Daniela Patti (Eutropian | Cooperative City), Jeroen Beekmans (Pop-up city), João Seixas (CICS.Nova), Maria Matos Silva (CIAUD.FA.ULisboa), Sandra Marques Pereira (Dinâmia’CET), Miguel Jaenicke (VIC Vivero de Iniciativas Ciudadanas).
Funding
Projetos-Embrião CIAUD.FA.ULisboa
Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia
(ref. 2022.01558.PTDC)