Interim urban uses and the politics of safety: Interrogating the emergent scholarly and practitioner knowledge base

Abstract

Formally sanctioned interim uses have become increasingly popular in European cities. They have also become linked more closely to debates on (in-)security, however, giving rise to specialized scholarly and practitioner literatures on that linkage. This commentary critically interrogates the directions of this emergent knowledge base. It situates the literatures and ponders the clarity with which they define their core concepts of security and interim space. It also reflects on the ways they apprehend the governance of such spaces, and on the impact of temporality and termination on the security politics of such places. The commentary argues that the emergent knowledge base highlights an increasingly popular phenomenon—but also that its conceptual precision requires further sharpening, and that it ought to be developed into a considerably more holistic, empirical and critical perspective more generally.