New book published on temporal aesthetics, rhythmanalysis, and urban craftsmanship

The book 'Temporal Urban Design' departs from concerns on the acceleration of cities, its impact on the urban quality of life and the liveability of urban spaces, and questions on what influences the sense of time, and how it expresses itself in the urban environment. From here, it poses the questions: what time is this place and how do we design for it? It offers a new aesthetic perspective akin to music, brings forward the methodological framework of urban place-rhythm analysis, and explores principles and modes of practice towards better temporal design quality in our cities.  

The book demonstrates that notions of time have long been intrinsic to planning and urban design research agendas and, whilst learning from philosophy, urban critical theory, and both the natural and social sciences debate on time. It argues for a shift in perspective towards the design of everyday urban time and place timescapes. Overall, the book explores the value of the everyday sense of time and rhythmicity in the urban environment, and discusses how urban designers can understand, analyse and ultimately play a role in the creation of temporally unique, both sensorial and affective, places in the city.  

Commenting on the book, Dr Filipa Wunderlich said: 

“Temporal Urban Design is about curatorship and regenerative design for cities, places and people; a design movement situated in the wider agendas of post-growth, de-growth and circularity in design and city planning, and design for unique liveabilities and the temporal and atmospherical wellbeing in cities. It reacts to the hang-over of modernity in urban place design, obsessed with materiality, hygiene, efficiency and the visual in cities and places, and unsustainable development design agendas overly concerned with normative solutions and transferable design principles for places and cities. 

This sole-authored research monograph is of interest to urban planners, designers, landscape architects and architects, as well as urban geographers, and all those researching within these disciplines. It will also interest students of planning, urban design, architecture, urban studies, and of urban planning and design theory.

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Dr Filipa Wunderlich is the Programme Director of Interdisciplinary Urban Design MRes, and Research by Design Projects Coordinator of Urban Design and City Planning MSc at the UCL Bartlett School of Planning.