It has been a while since I posted news about the Temporary Urbanism Lab. The last six months have been extremely busy with the SAPER project (see the range of posts in this regard - http://www.saperproject.com/blog) and air pollution related research activities (related to the ASAP project and beyond).
 
I am very pleased to report that Yueming Zhang and I have signed a contract with Springer for an edited book on “Transforming cities through temporary urbanism: a comparative overview”. This edited collection provides an international overview and furthers understandings of how temporary uses and projects participate to the transformation of cities across the globe. Temporary urbanism has been elevated as a core concept in urban development building upon the work of architects and urban designers, and its application has been crossing the borders of both the North and the Global South. There is thus a need to reflect upon and discuss the diverse ways of understanding and implementing "the temporary" in the production of space internationally. It should be in press by the end 2020.
 
The temporary urbanism Lab is also growing.

I have welcomed two new PhD students.

First, Paul Moawad joined the University of Birminhgam and GEES in September. He will be working with me and Paul Richardson. Paul is an architect and urban designer with an M.Arch (American university of Beirut) and a MSc. in Real Estate Development (Columbia University, GSAPP). His doctoral research examines contested borders and transient spaces.
 
Second, Ritu George Kaliaden, who was already a member of TUL, has successfully secured a PhD scholarship at the interdisciplinary Centre for Ecological and Revitalizing Urban Transformation (IZS) in Goerlitz for a PhD position in Urban Transformation. She will be looking at the temporary space usage in the city of Görlitz: an investigation of its potential as a tool for urban transformation. I will act as external supervisor and look forward to starting this collaboration early December.
 
Finally, I am pleased that Dr Michael Martin accepted to join the lab as an affiliable member. Michael is Assistant Professor (Lecturer) in Urban Design at the Department of Architecture & Design, Aalborg University (Denmark). He is a UK/IRE academic with a PhD in Planning from the University of Manchester. His research on temporary urbanism discusses the role and function of interim solutions within the context of the development process and urban regeneration. He exploits the opportunities presented by mixed methods research to highlight what multi-city, longitudinal, statistical and mapping approaches can offer to temporary use scholarship. His datasets comprise over 5,000 cases of temporary development, available on request.

In early May 2018, with my colleague Peter Kraft, I visited Sao Paulo to work on our EPSRC/FAPESP-funded project ‘Reinhabiting the City’. I am including some of the brief we published in the GEES School bulletin.

The project is exploring the issue of vacant and derelict urban spaces, focused on the area around Sao Paulo’s city centre. For a range of historical reasons, several once prosperous inner-city neighbourhoods have seen a mass exodus of residents, leaving vacant plots, empty buildings and a degraded urban environment that is increasingly subject to desertification. In some areas, such as Luz (also known as 'crackdown'), where we are focusing our work, poorer city dwellers have begun to settle in some properties, although they are generally deemed illegal ‘invaders’ by the city and it is often hard to tell whether properties are inhabited or not (an issue highlighted by the recent major fire in Sao Paulo). This was my first visit to Brazil and to the city of Sao-Paulo, hence a fantastic opportunity to immerge myself in the quite brutalist modernism of the megalopolis.





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The project, which is a collaboration between architects in the Faculty of Architecture at USP (FAUSP), architects at the University of Nottingham, and geographers and planners in GEES, aims to explore socially-inclusive mechanisms whereby the city can be ‘reinhabited’. The term ‘reinhabit’ is used deliberately as a way to move beyond the common problems associated with gentrification and regeneration. Although focused on a range of temporary built interventions – such as the use of shipping containers to create community performance and arts spaces (see http://www.ciamungunza.com.br/conteiners) –we are interested in how small-scale transformations in the built environment could act as anchors for larger-scale community development and improvements to the built environment and infrastructure of neighbourhoods like Luz.

Graduation ceremonies are always a very special day in British Universities (shame we don't have this in France!) for students, parents and of course us, as academics. This year was particularly special for me as three of my former PhD students graduated. Lovely memories worth sharing in the pictures below. Well done again to Chloe, Janna and Bin!
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I am very pleased to be leading the new urban initiative in the School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences which will be launched in September 2017. This interdisciplinary virtual centre will bring together researchers from the School in the areas of human (particularly urban and economic) and physical geography, urban planning, environmental and health sciences. It will also include undergraduates, postgraduates, alumni and stakeholders interested in the urban and will collaborate with other scientists and research units across the University and beyond. The Initiative will open new avenues for collaboration, funding and engagement for the School, the College and the University.

The Urban Initiative will make world-leading urban research produced in the School much more visible externally. It will generate original and transformative research as well as creative thinking based on interdisciplinary collaborations amongst researchers interested in the various aspects of urban environments and systems. 
 
The Urban Initiative will also ensure that GEES’s urban research strength becomes a much more visible feature of our teaching offer. It will support research-led teaching, in the School, in line with the TEF strategy. It will engage students with the range of interdisciplinary urban research while giving them new skills and opportunities for work experience. It will also help build stronger links with graduates, developing a network of successful alumni.
 
The Urban Initiative will enhance existing connections and networks to reinforce the School and University’s influence and engagement, locally, nationally and globally. It will more efficiently capture the School’s spheres of influence, making its activities much more visible for external stakeholders and funders. 

The website is currently under development and more information will be circulated soon.

Meanwhile you can follow us and contact us via twitter: @GEES_Urban