Towards intergenerational neutrality in urban planning and governance: Reflections on temporality in sustainability transitions research

Abstract

In urban studies, ‘presentism’ – the prioritisation of present-day concerns at the expense of historical and future considerations – has emerged as a critical bias that is rarely challenged, either through governance structures, institutional frameworks and urban planning and design, or as the ethical basis for our communities and social relations. From the vantage of the historical social sciences, we problematise applications of presentism within the context of urban development and planning, arguing that a presentist bias in contemporary approaches to urban studies risks suppressing detailed understandings of how legacies of the past condition options in the present and narrow considerations of the future. In this introductory editorial, we introduce the scope of the special issue on ‘Long-Term Intergenerational Perspectives on Urban Sustainability Transitions’ and its eight contributing articles. Through reflecting on and contextualising the eight articles, we argue that historical and archaeological approaches to time can help promote better intergenerational outcomes. Linking to a transdisciplinary discourse on temporality in urban decision-making, we put forward the theory of ‘temporal neutrality’ as a boundary object that can help integrate and focus thinking on temporality and intergenerational trade-offs in urban planning. We draw upon research on environmental justice, ethics and humanities to advocate and articulate considerations of intergenerational neutrality in urban studies.

Introduction: Moving beyond the presentist bias within urban sustainability transitions

Propositions that there is a need for ‘long-term’ perspectives pervade global charters set to inform policy and planning (United Nations, 2015, 2024), the New Urban Agenda (NUA) (United Nations, 2017) and urban sustainability discourse. The principle of sustainability has intergenerational equity at its core (United Nations, 1987), and it is widely recognised that the built environment and urban structures shape distributional patterns of wealth and well-being over the long term (Marcus, 2023).

Despite this, the time periods of many urban policies are shallow and biased towards short-term knowledge and decision-making – most often spanning much less than a single human lifetime. Although recent global charters such as the UN Habitat III’s NUA specifically call for medium- to long-term thinking, neither are defined within the document (United Nations, 2017). We argue that to successfully develop and support intergenerational equity within today’s push for the sustainability of urban systems, a more systematic and transdisciplinary long-term perspective is needed to integrate urban policy, design, planning and management with robust sources of long-term knowledge and inquiry.

This special issue on ‘Long-Term Intergenerational Perspectives on Urban Sustainability Transitions’ addresses this critical gap by assembling current empirical, conceptual and theoretical studies on the long term, demonstrating their application to today’s foremost challenges in urban sustainability transitions. Considering the current fragmentation and peripheral nature of projects tackling long-term urban sustainability transitions head-on, there is significant scope for developing this important area of research. Towards this goal, the articles contained within the special issue advance long-term knowledge from different vantage points.

In this introduction to the special issue, we argue that urban planning, design and management approaches based on a shallow temporal lens may obscure the ‘wickedness’ of many sustainability problems and unintentionally drive social-ecological systems closer to global sustainability thresholds and tipping points with negative long-term consequences (Barthel et al., 2019; Moore, 2018; Steffen et al., 2007). Short-term approaches can therefore deprive future generations of adequate resources, well-being and quality of life. Although current agreements such as the NUA, Agenda 2030’s sustainable development goals (SDGs) and the Paris Accord are important points of departure for targeting sustainability (Battersby, 2017; Caprotti et al., 2017; Frantzeskaki et al., 2022; Messerli et al., 2019; Rozhenkova et al., 2019; Skyllstad, 2018), they fail to deliver a focused and systematic approach to long-term intergenerational equity (Spijkers, 2018; Vasconcellos Oliveira, 2018).

Urban studies research demonstrates a wealth of long-term knowledge (Atuk and Craddock, 2023; Friendly and Pimentel Walker, 2022; Lobo et al., 2020; Randolph and Storper, 2023; Sampson, 2019). The exact temporal scope of individual studies relates to their multidisciplinary character. For instance, some draw upon historical approaches to define, describe and explain process, change and system structure and dynamics, and others draw on complementary archaeological or ecological methodologies and theoretical vantages. This academic research is an essential part of what we describe as ‘the long-term knowledge project’. It can be better envisaged as part of a long-term knowledge axis that extends from theoretical understanding to the type of knowledge needed to link good ideas with the knowledge required for direct transformative action. Scholars are aware of this and have devised specific types of research such as scenario-building and futures-based methods (Berbés-Blázquez et al., 2021; Goodspeed, 2017; Zhou and Hawken, 2023) to help extend short-term considerations to long-term time frames, and these are used by governments and urban or environmental organisations. However, much of this research (Amer et al., 2013) has an overt future focus rather than a historical awareness of path dependencies and associated complexities. An archaeological disciplinary lens can help inform what Urry (2016) has described as ‘complexity thinking’ and avoid the deterministic or one-dimensional narrowing of much futures thinking.

The systematisation and scope of the temporal in sustainability transitions studies is generally implicit and not directly communicated and described. To this end, the articles in this special issue address the long-term from different temporal frames, ranging from decadal to multi-century to multi-millennia investigations. The second task is the linking of these variable resolutions across the long-term knowledge axis. We suggest that the axis has four, sometimes overlapping, levels: (1) public discourse, (2) urban development decisions, (3) planning policy and (4) urban academic studies. Arguably, there is a general tendency of increasing concern for presentist bias as one moves down the list (i.e. the greatest concern for presentist bias in urban academic studies). We see these four levels as a single system.

The effectiveness of research within this axis can be assessed in its ability to ‘cut through’ and influence policy. By this assessment, the research–policy–society change ‘system’ is implicated in its entirety and no amount of finger-pointing by academics or researchers will make that research more effective. Its success is in its ability to effect change. Therefore, we see the emergence of sustainability transitions research (STR) as a significant opportunity to link across sectors, thereby forming a transdisciplinary agenda and approach. Over the past few decades, urban STR has emerged as a new disciplinary field to help navigate towards a more sustainable future for cities. However, a rigorous appreciation of temporality, and for that matter ‘the urban’, is generally absent from this field. The definition of urban sustainability transitions as ‘long-term, multi-dimensional, and fundamental transformation processes through which established socio-technical systems shift to more sustainable modes of production and consumption’ (Markard et al., 2012: 956) fails to adequately recognise the ontological, epistemological and practical challenges of temporality.

We argue that despite superficial references to the long-term in STR and sustainability policy there remains a ‘presentist’ bias within global sustainability discourse. Presentism, in its essence, is a philosophical stance to ontology and epistemology that holds the present as the sole reality, discounting the existence or significance of the past and the future (Mozersky, 2011). Presentism is similar to temporal solipsism – the ‘failure to see the present as one time among others, equally real’ (Brink, 2011: 381; Craig, 2001). In ethics, presentism and temporal solipsism are, arguably, indirectly implied in time biases towards the near, that is, the preference for benefits to be in the very near future and harms to be in the distant future (Greene, 2024; Greene and Sullivan, 2015). Behavioural economists recognise this position as time preference, ‘the preference for immediate utility over delayed utility’ (Frederick et al., 2002: 352), and it is closely related to the concept of time discounting, that is, ‘any reason for caring less about a future consequence’ (Frederick et al., 2002: 352).

In global urban policy, presentism translates to a focus on current urban issues, with less attention given to the historical processes that shaped cities or the long-term consequences of past, present and future urban planning decisions. Such an approach leads to a myopic understanding of complex urban dynamics, resulting in policies that not only might fail to address the root causes of observed problems but also strip away the capacity to anticipate challenges that may emerge and play out over different timescales into the future.

Acknowledging presentism’s ontological lapsus in STR and policy is necessary in order to advance principles and instruments that better forestall and navigate probable future consequences in urban policy and planning. In particular, we need to pay attention to policy structures that set in motion urban governance decisions which may have unintended outcomes that are delayed by hundreds of years, or even more (Chapman, 2001).

Within urban STR, a cognisance beyond presentism’s immediacy and a greater emphasis on the long-term is necessary for at least two reasons. Firstly, a systematic approach to the long-term is essential to give greater and more explicit consideration to past, present and future urban and urbanising generations. A fair distribution of the ‘benefits and burdens’ of urbanisation amongst the present as well as between present and near future generations does not guarantee the well-being of more temporally distant future generations (Vasconcellos Oliveira, 2018). Nowhere is this clearer than with climate justice, with its impacts unevenly distributed and experienced across time as well as space (Goh, 2020). Secondly, a systematic approach to the long-term is necessary to establish a coherent foundation of long-term knowledge for present and future decision-making. Cities have frequently intensified inequalities across a range of critical urban themes (Kohler and Smith, 2018; Mayer, 2020), such as access to resources, access to urban technologies (Smith et al., 2021) and exposure to risk. Such unfair developments are likely to be reproduced during current urban sustainability transitions if novel theoretical perspectives are not developed, communicated and adopted with greater clarity and urgency.

This special issue presents eight papers and through them a diverse range of research on the long-term that can inform current urban policy and transform it in ways which make it more sensitive and attuned not only to the temporalities of processes and systems but also to practical mechanisms for implementing decisions that integrate considerations of past and future generations. It also seeks to better integrate existing knowledge from urban studies and archaeology, which although cognisant of the long-term is poorly calibrated to communicate that knowledge to other disciplines and sectors to inform STR.

Elaborating the long term in relation to STR

STR is focused on ‘large-scale societal changes, deemed necessary to solve grand societal challenges’ (Loorbach et al., 2017: 600). In a recent review, Morrissey et al. (2018: 57) suggest that there is a need for better ‘[l]ong-term thinking and setting of visions and goals’ to inform short-term policy development, indicating an awareness of and concern for time. STR literature is replete with time-sensitive terms and mentions of trajectories and their challenges. Despite a cognisance of the significance of the long-term (Grin et al., 2017) and an emphasis on transdisciplinarity (Schäpke et al., 2017, 2018), urban STR has not pragmatically engaged with disciplines that focus on long-term social change, such as history and archaeology (Köhler et al., 2019). There are several reasons for this. Current knowledge on the long-term is located across various disciplines, with each possessing different understanding of what constitutes the ‘long-term’ (Lane, 2019). For example, Lane emphasises that each disciplinary area has its own temporal reference system and understanding of what constitutes the long-term. This is evident with climate change policy research, which typically focuses on 10–100-year time spans, contrasted with environmental management and development studies, which typically focus on 5–20- and 10–20-year time spans, respectively. History is extremely variable but typically focuses on spans up to half a millennium, whereas archaeology commonly focuses on spans between 400 years and several millennia (Lane, 2019: 54–57). In this special issue, we highlight the potentials both for the STR discourse and for disciplines such as archaeology and history to enhance the dialogue on urban sustainability transitions by considering temporal theories and approaches. We foresee that such collaborations may enrich the STR discourse by paying greater attention to temporality. There is, at the same time, significant scope for archaeologists’ greater engagement in STR, because despite the potential of applied archaeology (Altschul et al., 2017; Guttmann-Bond, 2010, 2019; Isendahl and Stump, 2019b), archaeologists are not trained to apply their disciplinary knowledge to current urban policy and planning challenges and have remained relatively inward-looking and hesitant about – if not resistant to – broader application and relevance for policy challenges (Ortman et al., 2020; Renfrew, 2005; Smith, 2010, 2023).

This special issue aims to deliver a step change in the way that time (Bailey, 1987, 2007; Gaddis, 2002) and intergenerational equity (Roemer and Suzumura, 2007; Spijkers, 2018) are considered and addressed in urban planning and policy. This step change can leverage paradigm-shifting approaches to urban development that balance attention to current prosperity and urban justice with long-term biophysical health and equity (Malekpour et al., 2015). The overarching structure of the special issue addresses larger debates of sustainable urban settlements (Bai et al., 2016; Bren d’Amour et al., 2017; Güneralp et al., 2013, 2015; Hawken et al., 2021; Isendahl and Smith, 2013) and the duration and persistence of cities through time (Reba et al., 2016; Smith et al., 2021), while simultaneously developing practical insights and recommendations for the planning and management of contemporary cities (Iwaniec et al., 2020; Thomson and Newman, 2020). The range of topics raised in the eight articles and in this editorial relate long-term disciplinary knowledge to three key themes associated with urban STR (Loorbach and Shiroyama, 2016; Loorbach et al., 2016, 2017). To advance these themes, we argue that the urban sustainability transitions discourse requires an expanded and multi-scalar temporal frame of reference beyond the current presentism but also in terms of the conception of time and the urban. Each of the articles in the special issue problematises time and the urban in some way, collectively introducing a more complex and diverse approach to the long-term and the intergenerational in STR. This is critical because, as Blythe et al. (2018) and Ayambire and Moos (2024) highlight, there are many latent risks in contemporary sustainability discourse, not least that the burden of response may inadvertently shift onto vulnerable parties.

Theme 1: Long-term socio-technical approaches in urban STR: Path dependency, sunk costs, lock-in and disruption

The first theme is perhaps the most dominant in STR and focuses on long-term socio-technical approaches to urban transitions. Originating in approaches to science and technology, this theme is arguably the earliest and the one from which many branches of STR have emerged (Loorbach et al., 2017: 609). Socio-technical regimes have developed from dominant technologies and associated infrastructures, spatial systems and resources, with energy, mobility and water frequently addressed within socio-technical approaches. Innovation is central here and issues of path dependency, sunk costs, lock-in/lock-out, disruption and collapse also feature heavily. These issues and concepts resonate with the long-term perspectives often present in archaeological and historical research, and are addressed in the special issue by several articles that utilise diachronic archaeological data on underground urbanism (Agwor et al., 2025), the spatial organisation of blue-black-green infrastructure (Isendahl et al., 2025) and water provisioning (Keenan-Jones et al., 2025).

Through a long-term case study of Lagos, Nigeria, from precolonial origins to the post-colonial present, Agwor et al. (2025) highlight local adaptive responses to the legacies of colonial injustices that have perpetuated intergenerational inequality. Examining the shallow and deep underground, they highlight that socio-technical inequity is built into the very material foundations of today’s emerging megacities. Commonly described as ‘sabotage’ to formal urban infrastructure and unauthorised by either urban governments or corporate owners, the informal mining of resources from structured pipelines and cables or underground aquifers supports the majority of the population.

Keenan-Jones et al. (2025) utilise a multi-temporal approach to review four cross-cultural cases of urban flood risk and resilience. The article highlights the persistent failures in risk perception related to recent colonial settlements and the moral hazards associated with flood defence infrastructure investments. The four cases of colonial societies demonstrate the prevalence of creeping settlement encroachment into floodplains driven by perceived protection from structural and technical interventions, and highlight challenges of implementing a comprehensive ‘whole of river’ approach at the local level. The case studies emphasise the importance of integrating alternative temporal systems, such as Indigenous perspectives that have a fundamentally different and, often, more nuanced deep-time understanding. This approach addresses knowledge and attitude gaps, advocating for the inclusion of Indigenous knowledges that have been overlooked in settler-colonial societies and demonstrating the necessity of a long-term perspective to recognise and implement alternative floodplain management strategies. The article also reveals the complexities of economic incentives and how sunk costs drive local actors’ priorities, often in conflict with central government objectives.

In contrast to the linear temporal approach of Agwor et al. (2025) and Keenan-Jones et al. (2025), Isendahl et al. (2025) adopt a multi-linear approach to examine how the pathways of socio-technical infrastructures and urban systems often diverge. Of fundamental value to STR, the article demonstrates the potential of such a multi-dimensional approach, highlighting temporal scaling and multiple temporalities as fundamentals for any assessment of urban sustainability. For instance, among Tikal’s blue-green-black infrastructures, the blue required the most significant investment for both initial setup and ongoing maintenance and proved to be the most unstable, experiencing a sharp decline during the Terminal Classic period. In contrast, black infrastructure was more resilient and sustainable in the long-term. The area’s current soil mosaic includes anthropic soils rich in nutrients and organic matter, reflecting the legacy of past urban black infrastructure. Tikal’s green infrastructure relied on both blue and black infrastructures, and varied significantly over time and space, was more closely linked to local institutions and today remains patchy and localised in character (Isendahl et al., 2025: 500).

The article also sets out an initial framework for establishing temporal considerations in sustainability transition initiatives, including clearly defining temporal terms, assessing alternative temporal methods and their limitations (taking into consideration that within any wicked problem (Rittel and Webber, 1973) there are multiple temporalities) and identifying the boundary conditions that might alter the sustainability project itself.

Theme 2: Long-term socio-institutional approaches to urban STR: Institutional patterns and complexities

The second theme encompasses an extensive range of STR approaches that typically employ methods and theories from the social sciences to understand systemic changes in complex societal systems. Economics, political science, sociology, governance studies and human geography typically feature in such approaches and endeavour to deal with the ‘complexities, uncertainties, and resistance that come along with urban transitions’ (Loorbach et al., 2017: 610). This approach is concerned with how powers, interests, discourses, norms and regulations shape path dependencies and how the inertia and the resistance to change that these may generate can be challenged and transformed.

Carballo et al. (2025) draw on a database of 35 pre-Columbian Mesoamerican cities to develop insights into the relationships between forms of governance, urban morphology and sustainability. The study reports positive correlations between the longevity of cities and more collective institutions of governance, higher population densities and more shared and equitably distributed infrastructures. These interpretations underscore the relevance of examining how systems of governance can be structured to foster infrastructures for egalitarian distribution of resources.

Early modern period Scandinavian urbanism is taken as a departure point by Thurston and Pettersson (2025), focusing on Jönköping as a long-term case study of Sweden’s borderland towns with Denmark. The authors challenge linear models of urban progress and highlight stakeholder conflicts when centralised ideals of the state are out of touch with local conditions. They argue that collective local knowledge and motivation make citizens as important an actor as centralised planners in urban development, as they are better equipped to self-organise and adapt. They argue that cities are unlikely to conform to idealised international models of urban sustainability and that, as a result, the global sustainability project might be better served by adaptively resourcing localised initiatives. How we might best support such local initiatives in a distributive governance model might be one takeaway from such insights.

Theme 3: Long-term socio-ecological approaches to STR: Ecology, resilience and complex adaptive systems

The third distinct theme, also derived from STR, is founded on an understanding of sustainability developed from ecology, biology and complex adaptive systems research (Loorbach et al., 2017: 611). With its roots in ecology and resilience theory, it addresses the stability and dynamism within urban systems through an understanding that urban regimes progress according to processes of dynamic equilibrium, following stages that are nonlinear, involving emergence, stabilisation, collapse, adaptation and recovery (Adger et al., 2020; Barthel et al., 2015). These approaches are concerned with how urban systems work within, work beyond and/or transgress (Rizzo, 2020) ecological boundaries (Ernstson et al., 2010; Fitzhugh et al., 2019). Articles in this section chart the complex emergence and durability of early urban systems in the fertile crescent (Lawrence et al., 2025), discuss the potential role of traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) for urban sustainability transitions in the Al-Ula region of Saudi Arabia (Alshami et al., 2025) and detail how indigenous settlement traditions of Aksum in northern Ethiopia may revise the mainstream understanding of ‘informal’ settlement as unsustainable (Sulas and Isendahl, 2025). In the latter case, the authors critically note that the short-term framing of contemporary urban development equates informal settlement with slum – regardless of their tight integration with local socio-ecological systems and resource flows – and casts flexible settlement practices that have sustained urban populations in the region for two millennia as unsustainable.

In many cases, TEK can help to critique and enhance major urban development if it is supported and considered as part of the development process (Alshami et al., 2025). Approaches integrating local TEK are not regressive but can be based on the support of existing communities and their links with the land across generations.

Isendahl et al.’s (2025) article demonstrates the dynamics of urban ecology over millennia, yet highlights that a regionally or indeed globally connected urban system – even a city with a highly resilient intra-metabolic system – is not necessarily guaranteed longevity, as the larger frame or boundary condition can shift sustainability criteria, limiting the ultimate durability of the city system in question. As Isendahl et al. (2025: 499) assert, ‘Although longevity of urban settlement may suggest sustainability and stress-resilience, superficial deductions are a poor basis to generate expedient insight for either theoretical explanation or practical application’. To address such boundary states, the article puts forward a multi-temporal perspective which can assist with the planning of future urban systems, as well as with understanding of the sustainability of past and present ones. To contextualise this, we provide a brief insight into the emergence of multi-temporal perspectives in archaeology and the utility of temporal neutrality as a concept which might link the various disciplines to better focus on intergenerational equity.

Temporal neutrality as a boundary object

Each of the articles in the special issue suggests the fitness of archaeological and related long-term approaches to expand our thinking beyond presentist preoccupations. Additionally, as a discipline that focuses on documenting and explaining past social change and that inherently values the temporal depth of human societies, archaeology provides data of urban development and processes that complement urban STR, revealing patterns, practices and problems that (1) recur over longer periods of time (up to several centuries to millennia) (Hawken and Klassen, 2023; Klassen et al., 2021; Lawrence et al., 2025), (2) are analogous to contemporary urban phenomena (Hawken and Fletcher, 2021; Sulas and Isendahl, 2025) and/or (3) are different from the observable urban present (Carballo et al., 2025; Isendahl and Stump, 2019a; Isendahl et al., 2025). By examining the material culture and spatial organisation of ancient cities, archaeologists contribute an extended diachronic perspective that enriches our understanding of urbanism’s past, present and future and informs the capacity to develop resilient pathways and transitions towards sustainability goals.

Archaeologists pay particular attention to two aspects of reality: time and material culture. ‘For many archaeologists, time depth is what gives archaeology its distinctiveness as an intellectual discipline’ (Bailey, 2007: 198). Archaeologists’ practical preoccupation with time is largely methodological: to date material culture and establish chronologies (what happened when, where and in what order). Distinct from the development of the methodological toolkit of age determination, there is a growing and diversified critical archaeological discourse on the subjective and objective dimensions of time and how the past, present and future relate to each other. Some archaeologists have cautioned against a unidirectional consideration of time (e.g. Lucas, 2005), leading to the emergence of decentred and more nuanced multidirectional approaches. One influential debate on time in archaeology focuses on the concept of time perspectivism, ‘the belief that different timescales bring into focus different sorts of processes, requiring different concepts and different sorts of explanatory variables’ (Bailey, 1987: 7). This requires the acceptance that the archaeological record is a palimpsest – a term derived from the historic practice of writing, erasing and rewriting on the same wax tablet (Bailey, 2007). What was new in time perspectivism was the argument that the entirety of the archaeological record should be treated as a palimpsest – because of the multi-directional and intrinsic relationship between the spatiotemporal scales at which archaeological records can be understood and the types of research questions that can thus be applied to them (Holdaway and Wandsnider, 2008). Consequently, different kinds of human activity and social change are best studied at different time scales.

Archaeologists’ attention to the dynamics of socioecological processes over timeframes that are not only highly variable but significantly more expansive than those applied in any other field of urban studies should, in our assessment, inspire critical reflection of the possible outcomes of today’s urban policies and planning decisions over multiple, intergenerational timeframes (e.g. to what extent and over which timeframes does a new urban policy affect future options for urban food security?). Arguably, if urban governance institutions adopt policies that integrate archaeological timeframes in impact assessment protocols, the urban planning sector is better equipped to recognise the risk of intergenerational discounting at multiple temporal scales.

Although substantial progress has been made towards multi-dimensional thinking about time, archaeologists have had more limited success in translating knowledge about the distant past into actionable science (Isendahl and Stump, 2019a; Smith, 2023). We suggest that temporal – or intergenerational – neutrality, a concept we borrow from ethics and that is practically absent in archaeology, STR and urban studies, is a potential and powerful boundary object. A boundary object is a concept of considerable utility in several fields and one that provides a potential bridge to link these various disciplines (Brand and Jax, 2007; Star and Griesemer, 1989). We suggest that temporal neutrality might help guide the integration of time-based considerations and ethics towards urban sustainability transitions.

Temporal neutrality may be a concept unfamiliar to most scholars beyond ethics, but its basic idea mirrors arguments in most social sciences. For instance, within urban studies and sustainability science, we frequently evaluate actions and policies based on their distribution of benefits and harms between individuals and population groups. Questions of ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’ feature prominently in global policy-driving agendas such as Agenda 2030 (United Nations, 2015). Access to resources needed to sustain both life and dignity are well studied and acted upon, even if the outcomes fall short. Utilitarians, for instance, advocate for distributions that optimise welfare, egalitarians support equal distributions and proponents of maximising favour distributions that benefit the least advantaged the most. In a similar way, we can act in the present to address the shortcomings of the past so that those tomorrow are better supported. We might evaluate actions and policies based on their distribution of benefits and harms over time, a concept known as intertemporal distribution (Roemer, 2011). This is close to the definition of sustainability, which in its essence seeks intergenerational justice.

Despite this, intergenerational justice (or temporal neutrality; i.e. not favouring one generation over another) is significantly less studied than interpersonal or spatial justice even though it is a critical aspect of distributive justice. In our adaptation of ethics’ concept of temporal neutrality, we define intergenerational neutrality to posit that the timing of benefits and harms should not carry inherent normative significance. Intergenerational neutrality is inherently non-personal and non-individual but instead is concerned with the distribution of benefits and harms across generations, which effectively means between different social groups (Greene, 2024). Practically, an intergenerationally neutral position means that no decision can be taken, or no choice made, to benefit present generations that knowingly inflicts harm on subsequent generations. It calls for equal consideration for all generations, regardless of temporal (and, effectively, spatial) location. An intergenerationally neutral position certainly challenges current urban governance systems – which are guided by a presentist bias towards time preference: that is, they are focused on addressing a problem immediately at hand and with less consideration for the discounting of future generations – and can help direct greater attention to temporal and intergenerational justice. A linear mindset may find such concerns trivial, but as Brink (2011: 353) suggests, ‘should the location of benefits and harms matter to us, all else being equal? This question is an ethical one’.

Temporal neutrality features large in ethical studies and philosophy but has yet to spill over into STR and critical urban theory, where its application could be of great value in navigating our way out of the interlinked wicked problems of urbanisation, global climate change, the biodiversity crisis, population growth and resource depletion which have contributed to the ‘Urbanocene’, potentially committing ourselves to ‘urbicide’ (Rauland and Newman, 2015; Wakefield, 2022).

Often embedded in notions of impartiality, benevolence and prudence, temporal neutrality is seen as a normative requirement rather than a description of actual human behaviour. Despite the rational arguments for acting in their own interest for a better future, people often exhibit temporal bias, overvaluing short-term benefits and sacrifices and undervaluing distant ones – spatially as well as temporally – and discounting or completely disregarding the great harms that have been done in the past which still have legacy impacts and global consequences for distributive injustice, such as colonialism. This bias is often seen as a mistake and a failure of rationality. However, it is essential to see temporal neutrality as a normative requirement and not simply as a description of behaviour. Doing so can serve as a framework for greater understanding, accountability and ethical action. It contrasts with common temporal biases, where people give disproportionate importance to short-term benefits and sacrifices. Temporal neutrality applies beyond prudence to concepts of impartiality and benevolence; it is neutral about the content of the good, which can be understood in terms of hedonism or preference satisfaction.

Extending the concept of temporal neutrality to the governance of cities and sustainability transitions, it becomes a crucial tool for long-term planning and policymaking. City governance involves making decisions that will impact the lives of residents not just in the present but also in the future and relies on engagement with the legacies of the past. Temporal neutrality requires that these decisions give equal weight to past, present and future impacts.

Temporal neutrality provides a framework for valuing actions across generations – a city might need to decide whether to invest in a costly infrastructure project that will bring long-term benefits but cause short-term disruption. Temporal neutrality would argue for the project if the long-term benefits outweigh the short-term costs, even if those bearing the costs are not the same individuals who will reap the benefits. The value of the intervention should be considered in terms of the envisaged total ‘life’ of the city. In terms of sustainability, temporal neutrality aligns with the principle of intergenerational equity, which holds that we should not compromise the ability of future generations to meet their needs. This principle is central to many sustainability initiatives, from climate change mitigation to sustainable resource use. Temporal neutrality supports these initiatives by demanding that we give equal consideration to future harms and benefits. However, implementing temporal neutrality is complex and as a system of thought and governance it requires further development, being, as Brink (2011) emphasises, ‘provisional’, even if widely supported among philosophers of ethics.

Concluding remarks: From long-term planning to multi-temporal governance

As we have elaborated, temporal neutrality may encourage policies that consider the well-being of future generations equally with present ones. Whilst there are a multitude of five-, 10-, 20- and 30-year plans, each of these plans is designed from the vantage point of the present with its own limited scope and lack of prudence for considerations across time. Conventional long-term planning can lead to more sustainable and forward-thinking policies – such as those addressing climate change that require urgent action – but few assess the possibility of harm or imprudence in the future. We suggest that one way to move beyond the current Urbanocene is to consider governing from a vantage point in the future – or, indeed, the past. This is beginning to happen in an incipient way among school children, the Greta Thunberg generation, taking policymakers to task and indeed to court on behalf of the future. Time and time again, we are made aware of imprudent and unethical decisions but are unable to change the presentist bias of governance structures that seem to favour immediate gratification over intergenerational equity. Equal consideration of more-than-human temporalities – that is, a respect and awareness that there are generations and life cycles beyond the human – is an emergent and essential area of research that can assist to challenge presentist biases. Great urban thinkers such as Jacobs (2001) have long argued that human systems are embedded within the systems of nature and therefore follow the same principles such as development through differentiation, expansion through diverse and interdependent relationships, feedback loops and emergence.

If we were to govern from the past with the purpose to rectify the harms surrounding us today, what action would we take? Perhaps we would empower alternative knowledge systems that might help navigate and orientate more sustainable pathways of natural resource management. Indigenous cultures and TEK are increasingly recognised within sustainability science for their ability to manage landscapes and for caretaking of the natural systems that support urban landscapes. This special issue concludes that amongst various disciplines, archaeology – with its rich epistemological repository of knowledge and methodologies – applies a uniquely broad ontological vantage on time from which to critique and counteract presentist biases within STR. However, better integration of current established disciplinary perspectives is most likely not enough. The project for temporal neutrality needs to be transdisciplinary, drawing upon alternative knowledge systems for inclusive outcomes.

Establishment of such governance structures of the young, the indigenous and other marginalised perspectives might suggest the formation of a government for the future governing from the vantage point of an alternative temporality. In essence, STR requires a championing of governance that distributes decisions beyond the present, like a safety time delay that prevents the pillaging of resources for the present or blocking access except with agreement across multiple generations – both those alive today along with those yet to be born and with an appreciation of the continuing legacy and value of past societies. Such governance might seem impractical, yet, as suggested, the workings of such a system are already alive in certain cultures and societies and indeed within modern science too, albeit mostly trapped within linear temporal considerations. A radically different understanding of time is necessary for temporally neutral sustainability transitions and, by implication, intergenerational justice. Such an understanding would go beyond a critique of the Western linear perception of time, which privileges the present and disengages from the past.