Permission to experiment, the right to fail, and the opportunity to
succeed: The role of temporary use in building resilient cities
Author: Suzanne Vallance
Abstract: Christchurch was once well-known for being the most conservative of New Zealand cities,
but was suffering long-term inner-city decline as suburban malls proliferated. Then, in 2010, an
extended earthquake sequence began that resulted in the destruction and demolition of over 80 per
cent of the CBD. The Christchurch City Council (CCC) was overwhelmed and new institutions
emerged to manage recovery functions and activities. Despite these most challenging of
circumstances, four years later, the New York Times nominated Christchurch the second best city in
the world to visit in 2014, and specifically mentioned the work of two community-led, post-quake
networks undertaking temporary installations on demolition sites: Greening the Rubble and Gap
Filler. Both groups work with volunteers and donors (including the CCC), they have helped
rejuvenate the CBD, situated the city as the country’s creative capital, and promoted a civic revival.
While it has been said that temporary use is a waste of time, this paper argues instead that it is
precisely because they are temporary that practitioners, policy-makers and civil society have been
liberated and enabled. Temporary projects create interstitial spaces that are neither permanently
real, nor wholly imagined; they thus provide and promote permission to experiment, the right to fail,
and the opportunity to succeed. Because these qualities are valuable for any city, the paper
concludes that although temporary use has played a key role in earthquake recovery, there are
implications for urban management more generally.
Introduction
It is traditional to think that the appropriate weaving of policy, practice and civil society will lead to
relevant and desirable outcomes such as, for example, improved public spaces, inner city
revitalisation, improved security or even (given climate change and peak oil predictions) resilience.
The latter has become an important construct for those concerned with the ways in which cities
adapt to, or cope with, inept governance or austerity measures, industrial decline and the flight of
industry, environmental devastation, or so-called natural disasters.
In this paper we explore ways in which a particular form of DIY urbanism – temporary use – has
helped a city recover from an extended earthquake sequence. Despite having been dismissed on
more than occasion as a ‘waste of time’, we focus on the role of temporary use projects and
organisations in promoting a more civil society, activating policy-makers, and enabling communities.
We document how temporary projects create spaces that are neither permanently real, nor wholly
imagined and show how these interstitial spaces provide permission to experiment, the right to fail,
and the opportunity to succeed. This, we argue, is not despite but because they are temporary.
Consequently, the paper concludes that although we have explored temporary use in the context of
earthquake recovery, there are implications for urban ‘crisis’ management and resilience more
generally.
Temporary use and DIY urbanism
Those interested in the future of cities might note a recent explosion of interest in the burgeoning
suite practices broadly labelled ‘DIY urbanism’ where communities ‘on the cusp of crisis’ (Peck, 2012,
p. 650) have started taking matters into their own hands. DIY urbanism can include a wide range of
individual or collective, sanctioned or unsanctioned, long-lasting or ‘meanwhile’ activities such as
guerrilla and community gardening; housing, food and education schemes and cooperatives; events,
festivals and markets; alternative economies such as timebanks, local economies and bartering
schemes; ‘empty spaces’ movements that occupy abandoned buildings for a range of purposes; or
subcultural practices like graffiti, street art, skateboarding and parkour (see Iveson, 2013; Deslandes,
2013).
DIY urbanism often takes place in ‘loose spaces’ that are given new meanings through uses that
were never intended when they were created (Franck & Stevens, 2007). Thus, a vacant tower block
has been used to stage an international arts festival, a storefront has been converted into a cultural
centre, and a disused kiosk has been moved from place to place to serve as the operational base for
a mobile community newspaper (Haydn & Temel, 2006). Median strips become gardens, carparks
are turned into parklets, abandoned warehouses host fashion shows and art exhibitions, disused
commercial fridges are used as libraries, and murals with community messages replace corporate
advertisements.
In this paper, we focus on a specific form of DIY urbanism: Temporary use. Bishop & Williams (2012,
p. 5) have suggested that ‘Temporary is a difficult concept to pin down’ because nothing lasts
forever. Thus, they have argued that temporary use should not be defined by its longevity but,
instead, by the intention of the user(s). Similarly, Haydn & Temel (2006, p. 17) make a distinction
between temporary use and other DIY urbanist approaches in that they are ‘planned from the outset
to be impermanent’. This means that, unlike many ‘meanwhile’ and ‘interim’ projects, temporary
use projects tend to include deconstruction and exit strategies, and they may use different building
materials or methods for ease of deconstruction and relocation. This commitment to temporary uses
can make it easier to solicit help from site owners who may otherwise be concerned about squatters
and forced evictions.
Given temporary use projects are designed not to last, it might be argued that they are essentially a
waste of time. However, based on a case study Greening the Rubble (GtR) in Christchurch, New
Zealand, we argue instead that it is precisely because the projects are temporary that certain goals
have been achieved. These include activating policy-makers, promoting a more civil society, and
enabling communities.
The Case Study’s Shaky (Back)ground
To understand how and why GtR formed (and the contribution their work makes to understanding
the future of places), it is first necessary to understand the context. At 4.36am on the 4th September
2010, the Canterbury region of New Zealand was hit by the first of what was to be over 13,000
earthquakes. New Zealand is routinely affected by earthquakes and is known as the Shaky Isles and,
based on experience, the country has very strict building codes around seismic strengthening. When
the first major quake hit, despite experiencing ground forces among the highest ever recorded, most
buildings in the city retained enough integrity to allow those inside to escape. Nonetheless, there
were 185 direct fatalities and significant damage to homes and infrastructure. It was estimated that
in the weeks immediately after the first earthquake approximately 70,000 people left Christchurch,
New Zealand’s second most populous city, because their homes were uninhabitable, basic services
were disrupted (Te Ara, n.d.) or they were deeply traumatised by the effects on sleep patterns,
employment, schools and community life (Dupuis, Vallance and Thorns, 2014; Vallance and Carlton,
2014). Many people’s sense of ontological security was shattered.
Following complex calculations around the likelihood of repeat events and the costs of repairing
versus rebuilding, approximately 6 percent of homes and 75 per cents1 of Christchurch’s CBD has
been slowly deconstructed and demolished. Ostensibly in order to undertake such a massive
demolition programme safely, recovery authorities cordoned off acres of a once-bustling inner city,
with residents and business owners prohibited from entry by the armed forces and police.
The Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority (CERA) was formed by an Act of Parliament in April
2011 to oversee the recovery of the region, and decision-making authority ultimately rests with the
Minister for Earthquake Recovery, (currently) Hon. Gerry Brownlee. While a series of other plans
were developed for the wider region, he established the Christchurch Central Development Unit
(CCDU) to oversee the redevelopment of the inner city. They, in turn, developed a 100 Day Plan –
otherwise known as the Blueprint – ‘to help bring a renewed central city to life’ through proposed
catalyst ‘anchor projects’ (www.cera.govt.nz). These legacy projects include large innovation, health,
retail and convention centre precincts; a metro sports facility, library, cricket oval, cultural centre,
bus exchange and an earthquake memorial.
These massive - and massively expensive - projects, though grand, are controversial in that a) the
100 Day Pan was developed without public consultation, b) its implementation depends, in part, on
the compulsory acquisition of private land and the displacement of many surviving residences and
businesses, c) many residents would rather have quality infrastructure and rebuilt local community
halls than a convention centre, and d) interest from the private sector has been lukewarm and,
without private investment, it is not entirely clear who will pay for these projects to be completed.
Methodology
It was within this context that we began asking questions about the role of informal networks in
recovery. Answering such questions demanded a flexible and sensitive methodology, and a deep
familiarity with the setting. Mindful of concerns about the conduct of research and the ‘deadening’
effect that orthodox research approaches visit upon that which should be most lively (Lorimer,
2005), in this post-disaster context, we thought it most appropriate to adopt an iterative mix of
research and analytic approaches. From different research traditions, but offering similar advice,
Burns (2007) and Rappaport (2008) have developed an ‘orientation to enquiry’ which aims to make
sense of a situation through experimental action. Research in this tradition expects that a range of
1
The numbers vary according to whether one looks at the percentage of buildings demolished or acreage
cleared.
both deliberate and spontaneous opportunities to gather data will be presented over the course of
the project, as part of a process involving doing, learning through reflection, and ‘being in it’. Being
in the research brings the benefits of enhanced understanding of the various components
contributing to the issue at hand, and the ways in which they interact. The results of this research
are, then, based on over three years of immersion in2 and involvement with the case study group:
Greening the Rubble (GTR). GTR is a charitable trust dedicated to promoting biodiversity and
community development in Christchurch city, by undertaking temporary projects on sites left vacant
after the earthquakes. Numerous formal and informal interviews and observations took place over
this time, along with reviews of internal correspondence and other information available to the
public.
Outcome to policy
It is often assumed that broad transformation starts with policy, and policy leads to specific and
intentional outcomes. Yet, here, we question this relationship with particular reference to the ways
in which DIY urbanism and temporary use have been deployed to inspire, shape or even (preemptively) enact or perform policy. One of the easiest, and most common ways of documenting this
kind of grassroots-led transition (if not transformation) is through the lens of urban renewal
projects. There is now a growing body of scholarship exploring the ways in which formal urban
renewal strategies have been sparked by informal and temporary projects, from pop up art galleries,
craft studios, charity drives and reading rooms to food co-operatives and exchanges (Deslandes,
2013). Though some of this work is openly critical of the way successfully ‘turning a place around’
can lead to gentrification and, ironically, the displacement of those who seeded the renewal
(Gerend, 2007; Colomb, 2012; Munzner and Shaw, 2015; Bader and Bialluch, 2008), even critics add
credence to the argument that formal renewal policies can be sparked by temporary uses and DIY
urbanists’ activities.
Douglas (2014, p.5) has noted that activists sensitive to such critiques can be quite deliberate about
promoting ‘explicitly functional and civic-minded informal contributions’. He notes, as an example,
the way minor traffic incidents in the City of Pittsburgh were reduced after a ‘Cross Traffic Does Not
Stop’ sign was erected by the Do-it-Yourself Department of Public Works. By creating public wishlists
on vacant walls or painting official-looking “coming soon” signs for promised (but undelivered)
neighbourhood amenities, Douglas notes DIY urbanists can enact policy changes that are broadly
beneficial. At times, these are unsanctioned and pre-emptive, such as the installation of signs
indicating cycles may be carried on subway trains, incorrect (lower) speed limit notifications, or the
illicit painting of pedestrian crossings. Illicit or unsanctioned installations can also point out injustices
or perceived inadequacies on the part of decision-makers (Figure 1).
2
The primary author is a founding GtR Board member and is currently Chair of this Charitable Trust.
Figure 1: An unsanctioned dedication (Photo: Prefers to remain anonymous)
Lydon has branded DIY urbanism with long-term goals and aspirations ‘tactical urbanism’ which, he
argues, has five characteristics:
•
•
•
•
•
A deliberate, phased approach to instigating change;
The offering of local solutions for local planning challenges;
Short-term commitment and realistic expectations;
Low-risks, with a possibly a high reward; and
The development of social capital between citizens and the building of organizational
capacity between public-private institutions, non-profits, and their constituents. (Lydon,
2011, p. 1-2).
Though not all temporary uses are ‘tactical’ (to borrow Lydon’s (2011) framework), temporary uses
can be seen as a tactic that may then be connected to strategic and formal planning ordinances,
plans, policies and programmes.
In some ways, however, this alignment of tactical urbanism to formal processes seems counter to
the achievement of more radical transformation. Consequently, others have explored the ways in
which more fundamental changes may be initiated in the loose spaces of temporary use. Németh
and Langhorst (2014, p. 147) argue that temporary uses are able to expose ‘ongoing conflicts and
contestations between competing value systems, interests, agendas and stakeholders, be they
economic, social, ecological or cultural…[by] rendering visible the hidden mechanisms and
machinations in the production of urban space’. They go on to argue that temporary uses may
empower marginalised communities and provide them with a sense of participation in the creation
of ‘place’ (Figure 2).
Figure 2: GtR’s Pod Oasis or ‘Planty Hug’ (Photo: Jonathan Hall)
This is a process from which they are often excluded by policy, regulatory and planning systems and
rules governing land tenure, land use and occupation. This is a point that was made quite forcefully
by a GtR contractor:
I couldn’t imagine some of the sites that Greening the Rubble are operating
from now - like the Sound Garden site which is literally around the corner
from the Cathedral. I never ever imagined that as a landscaper I’d be involved
in a project that was actually, you know to build a garden on that site. I mean
that would have been amongst the most expensive real estate in the city and
now we had an opportunity to put a garden there!
Zardini (2008, p. 16) has argued that the ‘reoccupation of urban space with new uses’ facilitates the
development of alternative lifestyles and the reinvention of daily life in cities (see Figure 3). While
acknowledging the potential of DIY urbanism to reinvent life in cities and generate a wider politics,
Iveson (2013, p.2) has argued that reoccupation – or, rather, ‘appropriation’ - is insufficient. Instead,
he believes it is necessary to develop a shared focus around enacting the ‘right to the city’. Malloy
(2009, p. 20-21) has suggested that temporary use can facilitate this providing innovative ways
resisting the ‘dominating logic of free-market fundamentalism [that] corrodes social solidarity [and]
rejects social justice … by poking holes in the dominant frame of the city as an avenue for
competition and exchange’. Similarly, but from an emerging ‘insurgent planning’ perspective,
Friedmann has argued that broader transformation can be achieved through ‘a process of selfdevelopment driven by small action-oriented groups – ephemeral good societies – bonded through
dialogue and non-hierarchical relations, defending and enlarging the spaces for their own
reproduction in the larger society’ (2011, p.5, italics added). Because they tend to focus on small,
achievable projects, temporary uses (referred to by a local observer as ‘David’s pebbles’) present
more accessible and varied ways of addressing the state’s blind spots or resisting corporate Goliath.
Figure 3: Re-imagining broken places (Photo: Author)
From aggregates of individuals to communities
Civil society is a slippery notion and one that is more difficult to grasp in the face of post-modern
concerns around unifying (silencing) discourses and God Tricks (Haraway, 1998). In this light, it is
unlikely that there is one path to one civil society. Perhaps as a consequence, scholarship has started
to look more closely at ‘situated knowledges’ (ibid) possessed by, and located in, various
‘communities’. Like ‘civil society’, ‘community’ is another term that is often used, but rarely
interrogated. It has many meanings: Thorns (2002), for example, identified over ninety-four different
definitions of community with people being the only common factor, though many emphasised
shared values and common goals (see also Chamberlain, Vallance, Perkins and Dupuis, 2010).
Though many equate communities with geographies, there has recently been much discussion
around ‘post-place’ and on-line communities (see, for example, Bradshaw, 2009), and ‘communities
of interest’.
For the purposes of this discussion, we adopt Tocqueville’s distinction between ‘communities as
aggregates of individuals’ on one hand, and as an ‘autonomous actor’ on the other. Using this
distinction, Patterson, Weil and Patel (2010, pp. 128-29) have noted that as collections of individuals,
communities ‘have only limited capacity to act effectively or make decisions for themselves, and
they are strongly subject to administrative decisions that authorities impose on them. On the other
hand, community as an autonomous actor, with its own interests, preferences, resources, and
capabilities…[is able to use] institutions of civil society like churches, voluntary associations, the
press, and so on [to] take immediate action to address issues that face them’. We use the term
‘community’ to indicate a non-governmental group or network capable of collective action (whether
faith-based, sports-oriented, politically motivated or quite informal) noting that their aims can be
diverse, and that they may intersect with formal state structures/vertical hierarchies in different
ways.
This raises questions about the relationship between temporary uses and community development;
for example, can something temporary create more durable ‘communities’? Though not all
temporary use projects are collective acts, many are. Such projects can therefore act as lightning
rods, providing a focus for energy and ambitions that might otherwise be diffuse and formless. As
Bishop and Williams (2012, p. 220) noted, temporary use projects can harness a ‘latent energy that
can be tapped through a four-dimensional approach to urban planning and design’. People that may
have been unconnected can - and do - come together around a project, whether to visualise and
plan, implement, or undo. Whilst temporary, projects can assemble individuals unable to act alone
into a collective capable of action.
This, in fact, was how GtR was initially formed. The temporary project that seeded GtR was initiated
a few weeks after the first earthquake (on the 4th September 2010) by the Canterbury Regional
Council’s (ECan) Biodiversity Coordinator. He emailed an invitation to his contacts to ‘green the
rubble’ by temporarily re-vegetating earthquake demolition sites. This, he suggested ‘would allow
Christchurch communities to weave a response to the earthquake that merged rejuvenation and
repair with the themes of the International Year of Biodiversity...’ (personal communication, Sept
2010). Within two months, a loose coalition of disparate but like-minded people (Vallance, 2013)
broke ground on a temporary pocket park known as ‘Victoria Green’.
While Victoria Green was a temporary park (albeit with a shorter lifespan than intended as it fell
within the cordon put in place after the second major quake), the ‘loose coalition’ continued to
strengthen: GtR is now in its 5th year, has become a Charitable Trust, and has just installed its 22nd
project. Despite its focus on short-term projects, the development of this more durable organisation
has stabilised a small community capable of collective action that is both direct (actual projects in
real places) and tactical (engages with formal planning processes). This collective expands and
contracts around specific projects, at times working with local communities or with more formal
organisations, such as the Department of Conservation, to add capacity and capability. As one GtR
affiliate explained:
‘Collaborated’ meant we had a common need which this space met and we
helped each other according to our abilities. We all brought something to the
project, we all got benefit out of the project and we all feel it’s our garden.
These efforts can be both empowering and meaningful, as indicated by this observation from a GtR
employee shows:
[The projects] help bring people together and give them a sense of control that
can otherwise seem lost in an over-regulated, up-scaled world. Because it is a
very different category of projects, I mean you’ve got something that’s budget,
‘vernacular’ if you like, human-scale, volunteer labour. It’s the very opposite to
convention centres built by machines.
The future of cities: Permission to experiment, the right to fail, and the opportunity to succeed
These case study results accentuate some key differences in the ways in which groups like GtR - with
a focus on temporary use – and formal authorities work in practice. Many of these differences are
neatly encapsulated by the ‘lighter, quicker, cheaper’ rubric promoted by Project for Public Spaces
(www.pps.org. The lighter, quicker, cheaper approach has flow on effects; for example, it enables a
broader participation in city (re)building and many of GtR’s projects have involved people who
would not normally be part of this process: children and students, artists, sports groups, ethnic
communities, people with disabilities, and ‘mature’ ladies with an interest in broken china (see
Figure 4).
Figure 4: The Green Room was a collaboration between GtR and Crack’d (Photo: author)
This diversity of participants means that the city better reflects their interests and needs. It has been
noted, for example, that more dancers feel a resonance with the city now (Figure 5). As Bishop and
Williams (2012, p. 7) have argued, temporary uses constitute ‘a more dynamic, flexible and adaptive
urbanism, where the city is …more responsive to new needs, demands and preferences of its users’.
This is important in terms of resilience as it is an aphorism of systems thinking that monocultures are
vulnerable. It could be argued that this applies to social systems as much as it does ecosystems.
Figure 5: Owen Dippie’s ballerina mural (photo: author)
One way is to see temporary use projects as a kind of social commentary or expression of issues
people see as significant. Unlike many formal participatory processes (such as having the
opportunity to make submissions on plans, hold a referendum, or run a survey) temporary use can
be seen as a more engaging form of engagement able to solicit the views of demographics that are
often hard to reach using more orthodox tools.
Temporary uses are valuable in helping cities adapt to change in other ways too. Being closer to the
ground also means tighter feedback loops are created; these feedback loops are a foundation of
systems thinking and resilience (Walker and Salt, 2006). Lacking an elected mandate, temporary uses
often have to be more careful about enlisting the support of others around them. In practical terms,
this might mean iteratively making modifications that lead to improved outcomes as the project
unfolds.
Though they may seem obvious, it is worth teasing out other differences between informal and
formal city re-building practices (Table 1). Temporary projects, being cheaper, quicker and diverse,
tend to promote an experimental attitude, allowing trial runs and proof of concept prototypes. As
one example, the idea of green roofs was a popular feature of the Christchurch City Council’s postquake Share an Idea campaign, but there were few working examples currently in Christchurch.
GtR’s Green Roof project uses four small donated and relocatable buildings of about 12 m2 each.
These act as demonstrations of green-roofed buildings though, as one volunteer noted, ‘They might
end up being exemplars of what not to do! That’s still useful isn’t it’? Whether successful or not, the
green roofs will contribute to a better understanding of this largely untested and unorthodox (in
New Zealand) approach to urban agriculture.
GtR
Temporary
Seeds
Screws, paint, plants
Opportunistic
Unpaid labour
Shoestring budget
Social and cultural capital
Quick
Iterative, adaptable
Guidelines
Organic
Low risk
Experimental
Responsive to context
Fun
Process
Small-scale
CERA/CCDU
Legacy
Anchors
Concrete, steel and glass
Deterministic
Paid labour
Big budget
Financial capital
Eventually, maybe
Planned, programmed
Instructions and Blueprints
Bureaucratic
High risk
Orthodox, tried and tested
Generic principles
Necessary
Product
Comprehensive
Table 1: Comparison of GtR and CERA/CCDU
Temporary uses are also an important vehicle for social learning and capability development.
Participation in this network has taught members various skills ranging from practical, on-site
competence with a drill, to fundraising, website development, presentations, submissions on plans,
human resource management, photography, accounting, landscape design, and so on.
While there are clearly some projects and services that communities cannot undertake, our research
suggests there is room to explore how the iterative, responsive, low-risk and adaptive approaches
exemplified by temporary use groups might be included or modified to inform formal policy and
planning for the future of places. We conclude with an example of how this ‘adaptive urbanism’
(see, for example, www.adaptiveurbanism.org.nz) might be applied in practice using a controversial
project: The proposed Christchurch Convention Centre.
It is currently unclear how CERA intends to fund the project given reluctance on the part of the
Christchurch City Council to contribute financially, and the lukewarm response from the private
sector. An alternative might be to seed the project by building a Centre within known and available
budgets, but invite designs that have the potential grow if and when additional funding is secured.
The design brief could also incentivise and support diversity by encouraging a broader range of uses
and users than is traditional. Given the vulnerability of convention centre users during a disaster (as
they are often from out of town), it could at least double as an evacuation centre for example. This
could be achieved by adopting lighter and quicker, and possibly cheaper fixtures, such as moveable
walls and seating, and building relationships with different groups (such as civil defence personnel).
While this is just one, possibly quite trivial example, there is a broader message here for urban
managers and practitioners about being more adapt-able, and accepting change as a normal part of
everyday life. Seeing the potential of places, and being flexible about how they are used is a core
characteristic of temporary use. We have argued that the adapt-ability such uses promote is key to
the future of cities as it gives a greater number of people permission to experiment, the right to fail,
and the opportunity to succeed.
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