The “living of time”: Entangled temporalities of home and the city

Abstract

This paper explores the entanglements between urban and domestic temporalities in order to understand what it means to live in the city. The “living of time” encompasses the temporalities of urban dwelling at home and in relation to the wider estate, street, neighbourhood, and city and reveals how residents adapt to, negotiate, and at times resist processes of change and continuity at home and in the city.

‘Tales from other people’s houses’: home and dis/connection in an East London neighbourhood

“…Rather than being fixed, our home-city-biographies reveal how a sense of dis/connection with neighbours and place may ebb and flow across time, closely related to family and migration histories, and over generations and the life course (see Blunt et al, 2020). Having children was a key factor in people's experiences with neighbours, creating, for many, a sense of local belonging and 'community' with other parents.…”

“…This paper draws on sixteen home-city biographies with residents from three generations and different ethnicities who live on a variety of housing estates with different housing types and tenures. The home-city biographies represent 'the life stories of urban residents' (Blunt and Sheringham, 2018, p. 13; also see Blunt et al, 2020) and explore the mutually constitutive nature of home and city lives. In what follows, we draw on these home-city biographies to analyse home as a site of sensory, material and social dis/connection with the wider city through experiences and encounters with neighbours and the neighbourhood.…”

“…All live in an area shaped by diversity in relation to the ethnicity and migration histories of its residents, alongside processes of urban change from bomb damage, slum clearance and the construction of post-war social housing to more recent regeneration and gentrification. Drawing on a series of home-city biographies (Blunt et al, 2020), we explore the ways in which residents' dis/connections with their neighbours and the wider neighbourhood shape their sense of place and affective displacement in the context of urban change. Whilst home has been a site and/or spatial imaginary (Blunt & Dowling, 2006) through which to explore forms of urban displacement in urban public space (Butcher & Dickens, 2016) or on a domestic scale (Burrell, 2014), this paper adopts a home-city approach to understand both within the same conceptual frame (Blunt and Sheringham, 2018).…”

“…Drawing on a series of home-city biographies (Blunt et al, 2020), we explore the ways in which residents' dis/connections with their neighbours and the wider neighbourhood shape their sense of place and affective displacement in the context of urban change. Whilst home has been a site and/or spatial imaginary (Blunt & Dowling, 2006) through which to explore forms of urban displacement in urban public space (Butcher & Dickens, 2016) or on a domestic scale (Burrell, 2014), this paper adopts a home-city approach to understand both within the same conceptual frame (Blunt and Sheringham, 2018). It does so by addressing three key questions: what makes a city 'liveable' for its diverse residents within and across both domestic and public spaces?…”

Walking with light and the discontinuous experience of urban change

“…In many cities, residents are accustomed to living with the uncertainties of large‐scale and long‐term regeneration projects (Lewis, 2017), employing different ways of coping with urban change (Koch & Latham, 2012), not simply by enduring the passing of time but through the “living of time” (Blunt et al, 2020). Such practices reveal “an urban capacity to negotiate complexity” (Amin, 2008, p. 12), foregrounding “urban regeneration as a fragile and dynamic process rather than a linear chronological continuum” (Degen, 2018, p. 16).…”