Temporary uses of urban spaces
A valid response to the needs of the city of the future
More and more often in the context of urban regeneration interventions one hears talk of temporary uses. These are interventions that do not involve a change in the intended use of the land and building units concerned. The aim is to facilitate the temporary use of buildings to be decommissioned or in the process of being decommissioned and awaiting a definitive function. This approach identifies temporary use as a valid response to the needs of the city of the future.
Temporary uses are currently regulated by Presidential Decree 380 of 2001, Testo Unico Edilizia. They are currently declined in numerous virtuous practices mainly related to the activation of processes of urban regeneration and redevelopment of degraded urban areas. This new perspective plays an important role in the economic, social, cultural and environmental development of the areas concerned.
It is important to understand that temporary uses do not entail changes of use. The Consolidation Act specifies that municipalities may allow the temporary use of property for uses other than those provided for in the current urban planning instrument. Article 23-quater of the Consolidated Text specifies that a temporary use may concern legitimately existing buildings and areas of both private and public property. It is necessary, however, that it be of significant public or general interest.
The TU also stipulates that in the case of publicly owned real estate or areas, the managing entity must be identified through public procedures.
The practice of temporary uses is an extremely virtuous one that is increasingly gaining ground in urban regeneration processes. Clearly, it is a practice that bears fruit when it does not involve any change in the intended use of the land or buildings concerned.
What is the convention?
At the basis of a regeneration process that starts with a temporary use of assets, there is a convention whose contents are fixed by law. Within the convention it has to be specified:
- duration of temporary use and possible extensions;
- modalities for the use of the buildings or areas;
- modalities, costs, charges and timeframes for the restoration of the sites once the agreement has come to an end;
- guarantees and penalties for any breach of the obligations set out in the agreement.
The stipulation of the agreement entitles the managing entity to carry out any adaptation work necessary to improve accessibility, the safety of the environment and guarantee health protection. Any intervention must be reversible to ensure the restoration of the state of affairs.
Legislation also allows regions to introduce additional provisions regulating temporary uses.
Currently in Italy, there are many municipalities with their own regulations that allow temporary uses by third parties. Within urban practices, the inclusion of temporariness naturally conflicts with the traditional form of urban planning that wants predictive and predictive approaches.
Temporary uses: the role of design strategy
This new approach therefore requires thinking no longer in terms of building a plan, but in terms of building a collective strategy. A strategy in which the actors are able to propose and produce plans and processes aimed at achieving common and shared objectives.
Opening up to temporary uses often requires reasoning by experimenting with citizen involvement and opening up to so-called ‘bottom-up’ proposals. This approach comes closer and closer to adaptive, flexible solutions closely linked to territories.
The increasing success of such practices shows how traditional urban planning is struggling to keep up with the profound changes that contemporary life is undergoing. We no longer speak of design, but of planning and strategies that accept the city as a living body in constant change.
Temporary uses of spaces are capable of triggering processes of strengthening infrastructural and social capital. To ensure the success of such actions, it is necessary to involve local actors, stimulate their interest, creativity and the growth of planning through transparent paths. These paths must be aimed at activating the community and forming a culture of the common good, generating intelligent proposals for specific needs. This defines temporary uses as a valid response to the needs of the changing city.
Arrangements for involving specific resources and skills capable of managing the participatory process (the facilitators) and co-designing temporary uses may also be the subject of an agreement.
What are temporary uses for?
Many cities, including London, Paris and Milan, are considering temporary uses as the focus of urban regeneration processes. This is to meet the new challenges that contemporary life poses. These challenges are similar to those affecting new forms of living, which see social housing as an innovative and viable answer.
The emblematic cases of temporary use are all united by an often laboratory soul in which there is a need to design, redesign and test uses and configurations of space. This is precisely the added value of the approach to temporariness; indeed, temporary urbanism aims precisely at the creation of a shared value that goes well beyond use.
Often the focus is on intangible aspects of design, such as the creation of governance models, forms of investment, policies and regulations. In this perspective, the added value of temporary use is to initiate and accompany transitions and transitions towards desirable and shared uses and visions.
It is precisely for this reason that we go beyond function and use, to lean rather towards process, the creation of collective meaning, the analysis of target groups to be involved and the design of management models.
The nature of temporary uses is therefore prototypical and experimental, requiring flexible masterplans that recognise the city as a complex system, always in motion and evolving over time.
