IN-PERSON London. Section A

Abstract

Over the past decade, temporary public space projects have gained visibility in public discourse and urban policy (Ferreri, 2021). Temporary and tactical urbanism (or t/t urbanism (Stevens and Dovey, 2023)) is seen as an alternative to formal planning tools and as a way to create more responsive and democratic planning systems (Silva, 2016). However, this global trend has received criticism for failing to achieve what it seeks, including empowering underrepresented voices, limiting social inequality in planning (Douglas, 2018) and challenging the neoliberal direction of established planning systems. In addition, this criticism has included that t/t urbanism has limited interaction with formal planning systems (Brenner, 2015). Through interviews and observations, this article examines municipal planners, local neighbourhood activists, and private developers’ understanding of small-scale and temporary public space interventions in a Norwegian context and these interventions’ interactions with the formal planning system. Norway has a recent tradition of using top-down, sanctioned t/t urbanism initiatives. It also lacks a culture for unsanctioned and bottom-up citizen-led t/t initiatives. This paper asks: How do different actors perceive the use of temporary and small-scale public space interventions? What do these actors seek to achieve with these interventions, and how? This analysis suggests that actors apply t/t urbanism interventions in multiple forms with disparate and often directly conflicting motives and goals. Based on this immense variety of understandings and uses of t/t urbanism, we propose a conceptual framework for temporary urban space projects relevant to research and practice in urban development and planning.