This new strand of research responds to an acute contemporary temporal crisis in cities that is marked by accelerated and arrhythmic patterns of everyday life and accompanied by deteriorating mental health and overall quality of urban life. This amplifies the significance of localised sensory and affective experiences and practices for personal and societal wellbeing. This is a wider branch of new research, that evolves from past work on place-temporality and rhythmicity in urban place (above), and challenges the (primarily physical) perspective from which urban design is typically approached and practiced. Instead, its focus is on the urban temporal rhythmic aesthetics, in other words, the everyday performative (sensorial and affective) patterns of physical and social space and nature, and the social rhythmic processes of co-production and co-design of urban places. This offers an innovative foundational perspective on temporal urban design that challenges conventional thinking and offers a novel and original perspective to theory and practice of urban design.
A recent book chapter publication outline some of the key questions under this theme, Temporal(ities): A New Perspective into the Design of Time, Rhythm, and Atmosphere in Urban Places (in New Urban Professions, 2018). I am presently completing a forthcoming monograph on "Temporal Urban Design: Time, Rhythm and Design".
