Historical Development
Early Origins and Precedents
The practice of temporary use in urban contexts traces its early precedents to periods of wartime scarcity and destruction, where vacant lands and buildings were repurposed for immediate community needs rather than left idle. During World War I and especially World War II, the United States government promoted victory gardens on vacant urban lots, rooftops, and public spaces to boost food production and morale. By 1943, over 20 million such gardens were cultivated across the country, including on commandeered vacant lots, yielding an estimated 40% of the nation's fresh vegetables by 1944 and reducing pressure on commercial supply chains disrupted by the war.[18][19] These efforts demonstrated temporary activation of underutilized land for agricultural output, with plots reverting to prior or new uses post-war, foreshadowing modern interim strategies to combat urban vacancy.
In Europe, similar adaptive responses emerged amid post-World War II devastation, particularly in heavily bombed cities like London. Bomb sites, numbering over 4,000 in the capital alone by 1945, were initially occupied informally by children for play, scavenging, and rudimentary shelters, evolving into organized temporary playgrounds and allotments. Campaigner Marjory Allen (Lady Allen of Hurtwood) advocated for "adventure playgrounds" on these sites in the late 1940s, leading to the establishment of the first such facility in Carshalton, Surrey, in 1954, though informal uses predated this; by the 1950s, many sites hosted markets, gardens, and recreational areas to foster community resilience while awaiting reconstruction.[20][21] These precedents highlighted temporary uses as pragmatic responses to infrastructural gaps, preventing decay and providing social utility without long-term commitments.
Pre-20th-century analogs, though less formalized, appear in industrial-era urban fringes, such as 19th-century British allotments on marginal or waste lands leased temporarily to working-class tenants for gardening amid rapid urbanization and enclosure. Enacted under laws like the 1845 General Inclosure Act, these plots—often on land slated for future development—served as interim food sources, mirroring contemporary rationales for activating vacant spaces to mitigate poverty and underuse.[6] Such practices laid informal groundwork for viewing vacancy not merely as blight but as adaptable resource, influencing later experimental urbanism in deindustrializing cities during the 1960s and 1970s.
20th-Century Evolution
The concept of temporary use in urban contexts evolved significantly during the 20th century, transitioning from ad hoc responses to crises toward more deliberate strategies for managing vacant spaces amid industrialization, warfare, and deindustrialization. In the early decades, temporary occupations emerged during economic downturns and rapid urbanization; for instance, following the Great Depression of the late 1920s and early 1930s, squatter settlements and self-built structures proliferated in European cities as informal adaptations to housing shortages and unemployment.[22] These practices highlighted the pragmatic reuse of underutilized land, though they often lacked formal recognition and were driven by necessity rather than planning intent.
World War II marked a pivotal acceleration, with widespread destruction creating acute vacancies and prompting systematic temporary housing initiatives. In the United States, the Emergency Facilities Management program delivered 156,623 prefabricated temporary homes between 1945 and 1949 to address postwar shortages, utilizing modular aluminum and steel designs for rapid deployment.[23] Similarly, in the United Kingdom, over 150,000 prefabricated bungalow units were constructed starting in 1945 under the Housing (Temporary Houses) Act, employing timber frames and cement panels to house displaced populations while permanent reconstruction lagged.[24] These efforts demonstrated temporary use as a scalable, state-orchestrated tool for crisis response, emphasizing prefabrication's efficiency in reactivating blighted areas, though many structures were intended for short-term occupancy of 5–15 years.[24]
Mid-century urban renewal programs in Western cities further shaped the paradigm, often generating new vacancies through demolition without immediate redevelopment. In the 1950s and 1960s, initiatives like those under the U.S. Housing Act of 1949 cleared slums but left interim voids, fostering informal temporary activations such as community gardens or markets in cities like New York.[1] Concurrently, socio-cultural shifts influenced theory; the 1960s postmodern critique of rigid planning, drawing from thinkers like Henri Lefebvre and the Situationist International, promoted "everyday urbanism" that valorized spontaneous, indeterminate uses of space to counter top-down modernism.[1] This era saw politically motivated squatting in Europe, particularly in the 1970s and 1980s, where activists occupied vacant industrial buildings in cities like London and Amsterdam to challenge speculative vacancy and advocate alternative housing models.[22]
By the late 20th century, deindustrialization amplified vacancies in former manufacturing zones, built largely in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, prompting a hybrid of informal and institutionalized temporary uses. Economic transitions to knowledge-based economies in the 1980s and 1990s created "entrepreneurial cities" that experimented with short-term activations to test market viability, as seen in post-reunification Berlin after 1989, where stalled master plans left surplus land for nomadic clubs, bars, and cultural hubs in East Berlin's industrial wastelands.[22] These uses, often low-rent and self-organized, catalyzed local economies and leisure cultures, evolving from protest tactics to recognized planning adjuncts, though they risked displacement as permanence loomed.[1] Overall, the century's trajectory reflected a move from survivalist improvisation to strategic flexibility, informed by neoliberal governance's emphasis on public-private risk-sharing in urban regeneration.[1]
Contemporary Global Adoption
In the early 21st century, temporary urbanism gained traction as a policy instrument for activating vacant spaces, particularly in Europe, where over the last two decades it has been adopted to recover underutilized urban areas amid economic shifts and post-industrial decline.[25] Cities like Paris implemented structured programs by the 2010s, temporarily allocating empty properties to community groups and startups to foster innovation and prevent decay, with initiatives such as temporary markets and cultural hubs in disused buildings.[26] In the UK, "meanwhile use" policies proliferated post-2008 financial crisis, enabling short-term leases for pop-up retail, events, and housing in vacant commercial spaces, exemplified by London's activation of over 100 such sites by 2020 to support the night-time economy and reduce vacancy rates averaging 10-15% in central districts.[27][28]
North American adoption accelerated with tactical urbanism experiments, starting with San Francisco's Park(ing) Day in 2005, which transformed parking spots into temporary parks and inspired annual global events in over 1,000 cities by 2015, promoting low-cost public space interventions.[29] Post-industrial U.S. and Canadian cities, such as Detroit and Buffalo, integrated temporary uses like pop-up parks and tiny house villages from the 2010s onward to test revitalization viability, with Detroit's 2017 initiatives converting 30+ vacant lots into interim green spaces that attracted $50 million in subsequent private investment.[30] In Asia, Taipei's temporary use strategies since 2010 have targeted sustainability, with case studies showing conversions of idle industrial sites into community gardens and markets, yielding measurable reductions in urban blight and increases in local foot traffic by up to 40%.[10]
Global South cities, including those in South Africa, Kenya, Uganda, and Ethiopia, have embraced citizen-led temporary uses since the mid-2010s as alternatives to formal planning deficits, with Johannesburg's informal pop-up markets on vacant land generating temporary employment for thousands while bridging infrastructure gaps.[31] The COVID-19 pandemic from 2020 further catalyzed worldwide adoption, prompting temporary street closures for outdoor dining and plazas in over 200 cities, such as New York's Open Streets program expanding to 100 miles of pedestrian space by 2021, which informed permanent policy shifts.[32] Despite varying regulatory support, these practices have collectively addressed vacancy rates exceeding 20% in many urban cores, though empirical data on long-term transitions to permanence remains limited to select European and North American cases.[9]