Newcastle University ePrints -eprint.ncl.ac.uk Tardiveau A, Mallo D. Unpacking and challenging habitus: An approach to temporary urbanism as a socially engaged practice. [Title]Unpacking and challenging habitus: an approach to temporary urbanism as a socially engaged practice [Authors]Armelle Tardiveau and Daniel Mallo 2 [Abstract]Temporary urbanism is attracting worldwide attention and has been praised for its capacity to transform socio-political and physical spaces while at the same time, it has been criticised for its tacit instrumentality as vehicle for the progressive gentrification of the urban environment. A closer look at temporary urbanism reveals a myriad of practices, initiated by a great variety of actors with diverse ways of operating and taking place in a wide range of environments. Rooted in assemblage theory, we situate our design practice in the specificity of an underused space surrounding social housing blocks in Gateshead, explore manifestations of habitus and the capacity of temporary urbanism to reveal and engage with socio-spatial struggles.

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Using Gorz’s writing on cities and time as a starting point, this sensory ethnographic study uses pinhole photography to explore how time feels for ‘unemployed’ volunteers at a community garden in the north-east of England. It upholds that the garden’s ability to fill time meaningfully is grounded in the food-growing and composting cycle but is also anchored to the mature trees, structures and artworks – made, grown or maintained by the volunteers themselves, that persist in the space for many years. We argue that urban community gardens offer their denizens an ‘elongated present’ that is fulfilling to the individual while also sustaining community and nature. Emphasising the need for enduring, rather than temporary or pop-up, growing spaces in helping us transition to a sustainable, post-work society, the study thus adds temporal insight to existing scholarship on the importance of community gardens.

This chapter reflects on variations in practice across two instances of street activism in the west end of Newcastle. Both projects shared with the Big Society agenda concerns for local democratic renewal and the foregrounding of community-centred knowledge, as well as an operating context marked by mainstream service retrenchment and piecemeal opportunities for civic funding. However, they also illustrate spatial variations including neighbourhood affluence, level of dependence on the local state and the strength of anchor institutions. The case studies are presented as a microcosm of broader challenges posed by the Big Society, explored longitudinally across a period of deepening austerity. They question the limits which austerity places on social innovation and the implications these may have for the civic university agenda in the future.