Tag Archives: Temporary use

How can cities activate unused green spaces and buildings?

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Picture yourself in that dark grey building or street, which does not smell nice, feels unsafe and makes you wonder only about one thing: I feel so bad, why did I come here? Now, picture yourself in that same building or street wondering only about one thing: OMG, it’s an amazing place, why didn’t I come here earlier?!

So… what’s happened? What’s changed to this area that you have to twist your daily itinerary to come and enjoy this area? And what is there actually to do?

The 9 Project Partners of the GreenPlace network – Boulogne-sur-mer, Bucharest-Ilfov, Limerick, Löbau, Nitra, Onda, Quarto d’Altino, Vila Nova de Poiares, and Wroclaw- have experimented this journey, using the knowledge and methodology gathered over the first year and a half of the network. Their stories tell us more about actions to make abandoned buildings, forgotten tram depots, unused green areas, or unused yet to be renovated built areas – attractive and worth coming to.

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Testing a future Food Court by prototyping it in real-life: lessons from the experience of UIA TAST’in FIVES’ L’Avant-goût

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Refugee Food Festival at L’Avant-goût ©Charles Mangin

Examples of temporary experimentations in cities worldwide have boomed in the last decade: whether they take the form of disruptive usage of public space for artistic purposes or to look at urban space differently, whether they become the trendiest spot to go out or do shopping, whether they incubate the city of tomorrow, whether they are led by citizens, private companies, universities, public authorities or all of these together, they all play a crucial role in today’s cities .

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Plan your own temporary use journey!

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Visiting the City of Temporary Use

Who can still remember vacant spaces and buildings, which someday were spaces free of rules, a ground for fertile experimentation, individual empowerment and creativity development? We could grow and empower ourselves as we can remember from the 50s’ film “Le chantier des gosses (link is external)”, where children were spending their leisure time in an yet-to-be-built abandoned lot in the very centre of the city of Brussels, and where the nephew of Tati’s “My Uncle” was eating doughnuts and whistling at pedestrians so that they would bump into a lamppost.

Vacant (abandoned places, urban wastelands, brownfields, derelict lands, degraded and deteriorated lands or buildings) can still foster creativity and experimentation for the city, benefitting from a Temporary Use. And many cities have experimented with them over the past few decades, putting together a source of inspiration for innovation and change and thus providing a new driver and incubator for urban development.

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Exploring the conditions for shared urban spaces with high human value

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This was the topic of the first Forum Camping organised by Yes We Camp , as a deep immersion at les Grands Voisins in Paris from 14th to 15th June 2017, day and night. Project holders, makers, artists, researchers, experts, public institutions from all around France and beyond exchanged on what makes a space move from being “public” to being “common”.

How come some spaces bring about a sense of legitimacy, welcoming feeling and invitation? Which systems can combining freedom and trust, to provide space where we are allowed to test, expand and open ourselves to others? What are the ingredients enabling to learn from one another and reduce the boundaries between social groups? These were some of the questions that guided our exchanges during those two days.

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