Intermittent Practices in the Contemporary City. The Case of Lisbon

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, disrupting conventional relations between space, time, and use and proving the need to evolve more nuanced discussions on the nature of a city. We call this set of alternative spaces, activities, expressions, and relationships that enable and empower temporariness and sharing in the urban spaces, Intermittent Practices. Addressing this complex reality, the present work – part of a recently started research project – aims to reflect about temporariness and sharing as drivers of the contemporary urban changes. It also intends to think about the new challenges that temporary and sharing practices seem to provoke to policy, planning, and governance. Finally, to better illustrate the multiple perspectives of these dynamics as well as their impacts on new architectures (new programs, new typologies, new occupations, new aesthetics) and new ways of living and generating urban space, the text focus on the Lisbon’s intermittences, giving a brief example of how, methodologically, the case studies under analysis will be systematized.