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Limitations of the Temporary: Landscape and Abandonment

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JUHXXX10.1177/0096144214563502Journal of Urban HistoryDesimini

Article
Journal of Urban History
2015, Vol. 41(2) 279­–293
Limitations of the Temporary: © 2015 SAGE Publications
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DOI: 10.1177/0096144214563502
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Jill Desimini1

Abstract
Vacant land invites occupation, both by ruderal vegetation and spontaneous human intervention.
This active engagement—taking the form of art installations, cultivated plots, or domestic
appropriations—is often unplanned and temporary. Capable of existing outside of market
forces, the projects are realized efficiently, but without long-term durability. Their short-term
value is undeniable but so is their vulnerability.  This is especially true of landscape projects
on abandoned lands. The limitations of temporary projects are elaborated across diverse
occupation types, including guerilla activities, pop-up projects, design collaborative work, and
short-term land leases. The argument is structured around four main points. First, public space
needs to be unregulated and diverse, not just on a temporary basis in leftover spaces. Second,
landscape projects require time to develop to perform culturally and ecologically. Third,
temporary projects can be placeholders that limit the need for long-term re-visioning. Finally,
cities with large inventories of abandoned land require greater restructuring than the temporary
can promote. The temporary functions well as programmatic overlay or an event landscape to
activate an existing, clearly articulated, often vibrant, space rather than as a catalyst for systemic
urban change in places of disinvestment.

Keywords
temporary urbanism, landscape planning, vacant land, Berlin, Cleveland, Detroit, Philadelphia

A surplus of freed-up space provides new possibilities. A dearth of long-term options for repurposing
is replaced by the ephemeral activities of interested parties who have little capital to spare. They
experiment with new uses and forms of cooperation, create social interactions, and give new cultural
meaning to what was found there. Not every vacant space will find interested parties and the fleeting
actions are of limited duration. Still, sometimes they represent seeds for longer-term developments.1

Temporary projects are an active part of urban life in both resource-strapped communities
facing depopulation as well as those experiencing growth and heightened development pressure.
But unlike other types of development, they are stimulated by high vacancy rates, underutilized
land, and slow economic times.2 This is all due to abundant available land, weak property struc-
ture, little governmental oversight, and few conventional planning and design initiatives. In such
a climate, it is possible for individuals to take action, becoming directly involved with the

1Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

Corresponding Author:
Jill Desimini, Department of Landscape Architecture, Harvard University Graduate School of Design, 48 Quincy
Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.
Email: desimini@gsd.havard.edu

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280 Journal of Urban History 41(2)

Figure 1.  Matrix of reference projects characterizing the temporary.

Source: Drawn by the Author.

production of space. Property owners and traditional urban developers hold land awaiting more
favorable returns, while enterprising individuals see opportunities to productively appropriate
the same plots, operating on a system of use value rather than exchange value. “Weak land ten-
ure” or a condition of weakened ownership3 allows for new activities to occupy the lapse between
one regulated, sanctioned use and the next. Temporary users and traditional developers operate
with opposing intentions and methods—the former is concerned with content whereas the latter
relies on financial return. The appropriator repurposes existing resources, mining the “junkyard”
for opportunities, whereas the investor pushes new construction.4 The spontaneous intervention
has little capital or political backing, whereas the longer-term project requires funding and sup-
port. The temporary user addresses what has been built over time: the built urban environment is
the existing medium to work with rather than the end goal.5 The developer ignores this pre-con-
dition, and, by doing so, ignores the power of the urban palimpsest.
In cities with stable land values, the duration of temporary use and the long-term spatial out-
come of the parcel are dependent on market forces, user initiative and initial goals. In instances
of land de-commodification, when land has lost its market value, temporary use operates differ-
ently, sometimes as the only form of active development with limited positive or negative cata-
lytic effect. A vacant parcel is activated initially, but the investment is rarely significant enough
to override the underlying structural issues. Instead, the temporary use either disappears and the
parcel returns to its previous state as in the Firebreak, Pop-Up City, and the South Central Garden
examples discussed later in this essay, or the use continues indefinitely but without the intended
reverberating response. The Heidelberg Project, a long-standing installation by the artist Tyree
Guyton in Detroit, is a good example. In instances of dangerous or confrontational use, the
municipality may intervene. But this too is unusual. Instead, the outcome is determined by user-
initiated parameters and the staying power of the individuals and organizations involved rather
than market fluctuation. Some projects are temporary from the outset, with stated end goals, and
last for that set duration. Others have nebulous guidelines and exist until interest wanes. A select
few are enduring—lasting for years or decades—supported by strong leadership and community
interest. The spontaneous wild landscape of Dörnbergdrieck in Berlin is an example of both an
enduring temporary use—lasting over forty years—and of the vulnerability of landscape when
ultimately faced with development pressure—hotel construction prevailed.
The variation in temporary projects typologies can be classified (Figure 1). Urban Catalyst, a
group of designers studying emergent uses in Helsinki, Amsterdam, Berlin, Vienna, and Naples
over the course of a decade,6 developed nine typologies, defined by operational characteristics,
relative ease of implementation, and spatial influence. Of these, three can be modified to have
particular relevance for landscape initiatives in areas with sustained market disinvestment. The
“stand-in” fills a gap in use without long-term effect. In some instances, the intention from the
outset is temporary, and in the case of abandoned land, the before and after conditions can be

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Desimini 281

nearly identical. In others, the occupation serves as an open-ended holding strategy with varying
ambition, a hybrid between the “stand-in” and the “pioneer.” The “pioneer” starts as a temporary
use but continues indefinitely, either through individual perseverance, planning inertia or sus-
tained popularity. Finally, the “subversion” is an activist installation designed to disturb, trans-
form or protest an existing condition. These are usually short-lived artistic practices designed to
be political statements.
Space can be appropriated through guerilla activity or through short-term land agreements but
formal regulation and institutional support is uncommon. On vacant lands in depopulating cities,
temporary initiatives are rarely deliberate actions undertaken by the land owner, and in many
cases, the owner is absent and negligent. Third party individuals—neighbors, artists, non-prof-
its—intercede informally. Regulated transfer also occurs, with properties transferred to munici-
pal hands, through tax foreclosure and land-banking. While cities do not have the resources to
manage this land, they are reluctant to give long-term leases for unproven activities. This limits
investment, but can protect against rampant speculation. The Genesee County Land Bank, in
Flint, Michigan, one of the most respected operations of its kind in North America, only recently
began offering longer term land leases in a highly vetted process.7 Ownership structure and trans-
fer is slow and complex, often cited as a barrier to vacant lot improvements. Temporary appro-
priations often happen in selected lots where permission is granted more easily or through illegal
appropriation. The legal structure or lack thereof, ensures the fleeting nature of the activities.
The temporary appropriation of space has numerous advantages. More activity and diversity
is positive. Unregulated and informal uses enhance the equality and vitality of urban space.
Project realization is efficient and achievable independent of market forces. The claiming of
space provides a caretaker for the interstitial, with underfunded and under-maintained spaces
acquiring guardianship. However, these benefits occur at the cost of transitory existence. Many
uses are displaced in short time cycles, limiting the lasting effects of their fruitful contributions.
For some uses, including event landscapes and pop-up installations, their fleetingness is appro-
priate. For others, the dislocation is disruptive and harmful to establishing long-term ecological
and cultural benefit, alternative development practices, and lasting structural change. This is
especially true of landscape projects, which operate best in slow time.
This article is organized around four conceptual shortcomings of the temporary found in land-
scape-based practices addressing abandoned land: the transitory problem, or the relegation of
particular types of use to non-permanent, non-regulated, non-supported status; the stunted
growth, or the inability of landscapes to establish in the short time cycles associated with the
temporary; the palliative crutch, or the use of stop-gap, temporary, land stabilization techniques
that can serve to deter future development; and the proportional mismatch, or the unperceivable
impact of the inherently small-scale temporary projects amid a widespread, systemic condition
of disinvestment.

The Transitory Problem

Loose space—the free, breathing room of the city, where resourceful and uncanny happenings,
like ruderal vegetation experiments and farming, blossom—gives cities vitality.8 Loose space
supports the intersection of differences, a prerequisite of “cityness” and urban evolution.9 Without
the unexpected, the spontaneous and risky adjacent to, or even embedded within, the conven-
tional, conforming and controlled, important juxtapositions diminish. These activities require
equal weight. When the balance tips, in either direction, productive exchanges diminish and
urbanity suffers. Economic difference is required, with capitalist and non-capitalist structures
operating together.10
The instability of loose space underlines an inability to recognize long-term value in alterna-
tive practice, rendering the emergent inferior.11 By definition, loose space is impermanent,

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282 Journal of Urban History 41(2)

existing without assurance of continuity.12 This results in a potential imbalance of activity over
time—in which certain uses are seen as unstable and others as ingrained. These practices are
placeholders for market-driven development rather than viable options worth consideration. By
relegating certain types of use to the temporary, they become the most susceptible to replacement
and future elimination. In this argument, the loose use is subservient to the sanctioned one.
This is not the case when a conception of “cityness” as the productive intersection of differ-
ences is embraced. The opposing uses must co-inhabit the same space and work together to
produce greater vitality. The juxtaposition is fertile. In the example of midtown Manhattan cor-
porate towers and immigrant vendor food trucks,13 the physical difference is remarkable but the
urban contributions are mutual. The food trucks are temporal and mobile—occupying the street
during limited hours—but not transitory. They are supported as a vital part of the space, benefit-
ing from the lunch-time crowds, while serving to activate the space. Perceptually, this can be
difficult to grasp, but with protection, an inexpensive, flexible use could be loose and yet lasting.
The temporary could be the temporal, promoting continuous flexibility and mobility rather than
settling for the inevitable limited duration.
With appropriate support—Urban Catalyst suggests tools to advocate for, coach, formalize,
and exploit loose activities—security could be also provided for the temporal. By embracing the
temporary alone, certain activities, from skateboarding to horseback riding; from gardening to
camping; from parasite constructions to artistic installations, remain unwelcome intruders rather
than valued alternative uses. The temporary should be universal and durable. Indeed, it should
not be considered temporary at all. If loose space is what breeds vitality, it cannot be seen as
filler, as something that happens at a bracketed moment in a leftover space, but as an important
aspect of permanent maintenance of vitality.
The temporary is a trap: it inherently negates the full range of potential contributions afforded
by temporary use. Considering something temporary both under- and overvalues its significance.
In the case of creative, entrepreneurial, and marginalized uses, they are allowed only temporarily,
in lieu of other options. Yet, activities found in leftover spaces, especially in cities with abundant
resources of abandoned land, embody resourcefulness and offer clues for potential use and physi-
cal transformations. In other words, the range of possible activities is greater. The parcels are un-
programmed—and like any urban designer’s dream—repurposed in ways beyond imagination.
Practitioners have something to learn from the informal actions that emerge with capital’s
departure.14 These include, among thousands of rich examples, the simple gesture of pouring
paint off a nine-story building, visually enhancing the vibrancy of the volunteer meadow in the
foreground; the establishment of a vineyard, framing a once-mansion-now-crumbling-building
as a chateau; the creation of row-house stables and a paddock on a site with instable soils to foster
local youth development (Figure 2). They evoke the response “only in (fill-in-shrunken-city-
here)” but raise the question as to why not in every city, as a way to encourage the “intersection
of differences.” There is a need to eliminate the notion that these self-organized, improvised
urban forms are dispensable, and in turn, move away from the rubric of temporary.

The Stunted Growth

The idea of the temporary is particularly problematic for landscape projects. The medium does
not lend itself easily to the temporary. It is slow to establish, requiring decades to reach maturity.
Despite this, landscapes have an inherently transitory quality. Like the social interlopers, the
landscape is regarded as loose. It embodies a different sense of permanence than other forms of
development. Even spaces designed to last are frequently viewed as expendable. Vegetation is
removed, soil structure disrupted, paving demolished and site appurtenances razed without much
hesitation. Landscapes are relatively inexpensive to construct and likewise, relatively inexpen-
sive to demolish. Barring site contamination or other complications, landscapes are readily

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Desimini 283

Figure 2.  Paint Pour, Detroit, 2011; Chateau Hough, Cleveland, 2011; Fletcher Street Stables,
Philadelphia, 2011.
Source: Photographs by the author.

removed, especially in countries with limited regulation. Protection is reserved for natural areas
rather than dense, fragmented, altered urban environments. Further, taxation and economic
incentive drive building construction when possible.

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284 Journal of Urban History 41(2)

Figure 3.  Howard Sukopp in the Dörnbergdrieck Site, 1961.

Source: Courtesy of Alexander Kohler.

Two sites—the ruderal, vegetal landscape of Dörnbergdrieck in Berlin, demolished in the

mid-1980s, and the South Central Garden in Los Angeles, cleared in the mid-2000s—are cele-
brated examples land-use conflicts involving landscape and development. In each instance, land
development prevailed over community support, resulting in the demolition of a highly function-
ing, culturally diverse urban landscape. These landscapes thrived in moments of economic down-
turn and stagnant investment. They garnered community support and filled a programmatic gap
in their neighborhoods, and even their cities. Yet with development pressure, they faltered. In the
end, Dörnbergdrieck and the South Central Garden were classic “stand-in” projects, having no
influence on the long-term spatial transformation.
Dörnbergdrieck was one of the last undeveloped post–World War II rubble piles in Berlin, a
final testament to a very particular history that produced a set of rich cultural and ecological
spaces across the city. Despite adjacent development, the site resisted West Berlin rebuilding
efforts for decades. In the early 1980s, it remained a spontaneously vegetated landscape, cham-
pioned by neighborhood dog-walkers and urban ecologists alike. It also stood as a strangely
derelict site, with homeless encampments and trash piles dotted among new residential construc-
tion. Given its longevity, the site was a prime site for the study of long-term ecological succes-
sion. Howard Sukopp, the noted botanist and leader of the Berlin School of Urban Ecology,
adopted the site as an important fieldwork location. He first visited the site in 1961(Figure 3), and
by 1974, was conducting regular inventories.15 It was considered the most studied ecological site
in the city. As a result, it also became the centerpiece of a contentious political battle.
Beginning in the 1978, the city expressed interest in clearing the site, first for safety con-
cerns, and second, for the construction of a hotel complex. The neighbors and ecologists
pushed for a nature reserve, battling for two years, from 1984 to 1986, until the site finally
succumbed to development pressure. Other rubble and industrial nature sites were preserved—
Hallesche Strasse, Südgelande, Gleisdreieck, Johannisthal—but the ecologists lost their most-
documented study site while the dense neighborhood lost an important amenity, a loose space
with opportunities for exploration and discovery. Despite protest, legal action, and data-sup-
ported biodiversity, in a country known for its progressive protection policies, the hotel pre-
vailed. In the end, the landscape proved expendable, losing ground to an unremarkable building
project (Figure 4).
Like Dörnbergdrieck, the 14-acre South Central Garden was a celebrated example of a devel-
opment takeover of an interim landscape allowed to thrive during economic stagnation. The

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Desimini 285

Figure 4.  Dörnbergdrieck Site from Google Street View, 2013.

Courtesy of Google Maps.

garden was one of the largest urban agriculture sites in the United States at the time of its removal.
It occupied a city-owned plot, originally seized through eminent domain as a location for a trash
incinerator. In a victory for environmental justice, the incinerator project was defeated by com-
munity protest, and the site was given to a group of community farmers for cultivation in 1994.
The farmers were allowed to occupy the land, but were not guaranteed protection or stability. The
city, without community consultation, sold the property in 2006 in a real estate transaction that
returned the site to one of its original owners.16 The contrast in the shift from one use to another
was dramatic. For over twelve years, through active local participation, the site was prepped,
planted, and tended, transforming it into a lush, dense labyrinth of allotments. Meanwhile, the
transformation back to a flat parcel was quick, executed, in days, by aggressive bulldozers. The
destruction was fast. Since the bulldozing, the site has remained relatively unchanged (Figure 5).
In the case of South Central Garden, a cultural landscape was defeated by monetary exchange.
The use value was unable to compete with the potential market value, despite strong backing
from the local community.
Both projects illustrate the slow establishment and quick demolition tendencies of landscape
projects. Time is essential for its development and greater communal appreciation of the land-
scape as well as the establishment of ecological and cultural function. This is true of spontane-
ously vegetated spaces where cover generally takes seven years to propagate, trees fourteen
years, and a full forest thirty to forty years17; and of cultivated garden spaces where the labor and
preparation required for establishment offers disincentive to invest in short-term projects. The
time and investment needed to propagate a vegetative landscape is not conducive to temporary
use, making the temporary landscape limited in scope and material.
The temporary vegetative spaces that do emerge do so out of developmental neglect or defeat-
ism, where abandonment allows for establishment. They are conceived of as hold-over land-
scapes and, as evidenced by the Dörnbergdrieck and South Central Garden, operate thusly. The
result is the loss of key urban spaces and the diversity of use associated with them. As meadows,
forests, farms, and gardens increasingly become alternative development typologies for land-
rich, resource-strapped cities, attitudes and policies must change. Long-term land leases and
alternative property structures are required to support the time scales needed to establish lasting
social and ecological performance. While often relegated to short-term leases or even land squat-
ting, these typologies do not lend themselves to the temporary. Function is highly compromised
and relocation is impossible.

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286 Journal of Urban History 41(2)

Figure 5.  South Central Los Angeles Garden, 2006 (top), 2007 (middle), and 2011 (bottom).
Source: Courtesy of Google Earth.

The Palliative Crutch

Neglected sites are colonized by vegetal and human interlopers as a form of de facto temporary
landscape. Never embraced, they are superseded by deliberate development as seen in the

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Desimini 287

Figure 6.  Pennsylvania Horticultural Society (PHS) Philadelphia LandCare Program.

Source: Photograph and map by the author. Data courtesy of PASDA and PHS.

previous two examples. At the same time, temporary landscapes are embraced as a means to
quickly, inexpensively, or more easily address landscapes of abandonment. Absent viable plans
and funding, temporary initiatives can provide provisional stabilization. Because the tempo-
rary implies less risk, less attention is given to the suitability of the use. These projects start as
“pioneer” initiatives but lapse into “stand-in” status with time. This leads to the second con-
ceptual shortfall of temporary use that happens when the space is not fully activated but trans-
formed just enough to preclude further development consideration. In this case, the goal is to
offer a solution to a problem—usually perceived blight—through the most pragmatic and effi-
cient means. The classic example is a clean-and-green approach where lots are cleared, fenced,
planted with turf and a few other horticultural specimens, and given infrequent, but regular,
maintenance. The Pennsylvania Horticultural Society in Philadelphia runs a successful pro-
gram, controlling numerous lots in strategic locations across the city (Figure 6). The program
is widely respected, with proven benefits toward improving visual perceptions and safety
around the sites.18 It manages a form of banal stabilization, branded as a short-term improve-
ment until development returns. It is a palliative, green veil approach without projective poten-
tial. Given its temporary quality as a stop-gap measure, the program is only evaluated against
the alternative, to do nothing. As long as it is better than nothing, it is good. Temporary mea-
sures require less evaluation and the perceived direness of the initial condition drives flat solu-
tions. Once implemented, the site is no longer in triage, but in stable condition, lessening its
future potential for significant reinvention. Radical changes in the urban fabric—Philadelphia
has an estimated forty thousand vacant lots19—tend to invite disproportionate responses.
Overwhelmed by scale, the interventions are meek, small, and short-term. The temporary qual-
ity of them allows for practicality and implementation at the cost of complacence and ambi-
tion. Yet, the cultural contributions and long-term urban design aspirations are minimal,
reinforcing a reactive climate of low expectations.

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288 Journal of Urban History 41(2)

The Proportional Mismatch

In the case of widespread abandonment, temporary interventions struggle to match the duration,
scale and scope appropriate to their context. They can describe, react to, and comment on the
complexity of the situation but cannot project beyond it.20 They struggle to transcend the boundar-
ies of the individual property, bound by limited resources, status, and reception. They are too small
to be perceived within the large impoverished landscape. They are too reliant on individual partici-
pation and too modest in objective to provide a basis for large-scale urban transformation.
Beyond the clean and green initiatives, activist art and design projects, pop-up events, and
vacant lot appropriations often reinforce the challenges of the temporary to move beyond the
reactionary towards propositional restructuring. They position themselves on the side of oppor-
tunity, engendering momentary excitement about a space and its alternative futures. They can
even briefly redirect a conversation about neglect and decline toward one of regeneration. But the
lasting effects are unproven. The temporary becomes a demonstration project rather than a viable
urban design strategy. It is often evoked for its potential to thrive in situations of economic stag-
nation and its implied democratic appropriation of space.21 Projects occupy abandoned spaces—
entering and exiting the urban fabric seamlessly between development cycles.22 However, the
temporary falters when the abandonment is too widespread, the time between cycles is too great,
and the social interest is unsustainable.
Activist and pop-up projects often operate in this investment void. They offer fleeting provo-
cations, lacking the infrastructural and economic apparatuses to propel physical transformation.
For example, in response to local discomfort about the “shrinking city” branding, the Cleveland
Urban Design Collaborative launched “Pop-Up City” to counter the negativity and bring the
city’s “dead spaces back to life—briefly with short-term, high-impact events.”23 Lacking a
development model to support permanent change, the project became about opening a city-wide
conversation. The events, while engaging certain prototypical sites—vacant properties, under-
utilized bridges, contested neighborhood spaces—were intended to provide playful and move-
able contexts for social interaction. The intent was never for long-term engagement, and as a
result, the sites trajectories remain unchanged. The conversation ended with the end of the
installations. The limitations of the temporary project as an agent to drive urbanism must be
understood on both a temporal and a scalar level. The short duration—one night to one week—
cannot be placed into dialogue with the time scale of Cleveland’s urban evolution or even its
trajectories of population in- and outmigration. The small scale—the “Pop-Up City” Cleveland
project has completed five experiments over four years—does not register within the city’s
estimated five square miles of vacant land.24 The scale of vacancy facing cities like Cleveland
makes the singular appropriation of a lot, or even the co-opting of several blocks, disappear in
the larger landscape. The temporary can play a role in instigating an important dialogue that
transcends the normative conversation about urban shrinkage but it cannot catalyze significant
reinvestment or physical change at the citywide scale.
This is evident in Detroit, a city known for both its creative practices25 and its widely available
land. The city has 40 square miles of land classified as vacant. Two projects in Detroit, the
Firebreak installations by the Detroit Collaborative Design Center and the Heidelberg project by
artist Tyree Guyton, are guerilla appropriations of buildings, landscapes, and objects, intended to
alter perceptions and raise awareness of abandonment. Both projects are strong conceptually and
offer clear messages—but in each case, the potential future outcome is unarticulated and the
ambition simplistic relative to the complexities of the sites. Further, the scale of intervention is
small, limiting the reverberation. These “subversive” projects have not spurred neighborhood
improvement, remaining singular, isolated and without future direction.
The Firebreak projects use the tactic of building appropriation but with a mercenary agenda.
Targeting six homes in need of demolition—of the 7,500 to 10,000 the city would like to

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Desimini 289

Figure 7.  Publishing House (left); Sound and Hay Houses (right), 2002 (top), and 2010 (bottom).
Source: Courtesy of Google Earth.

demolish—the designers installed various appendages onto and events within the structures. For
example, the Hay House (2001) was covered with five thousand bundles of hay as homage to
urban farming, while the Sound House (2001) was filled with musicians from the local neighbor-
hood, such that visitors were able to listen to the house from the outside but unable to clearly
view into the interior. The idea behind the work is admirable and effective: to redirect the future
of the neighborhoods as a firebreak redirects a fire, while drawing attention to unstable structures
that local residents would like removed. All of the installations were demolished by the city
within weeks of completion (DCDC). Yet, the blocks have remained largely unchanged with
time. The project is daring, innovative, conceptually interesting, and involves local capital.
However, it is small scale and offers no vision for the future. The idea is to alter the trajectory of
development but the results do not indicate substantial change (Figure 7).
The Heidelberg project, designed to improve the neighborhood through art, has been squatting
on its land in Detroit since 1986.26 Vacant houses and surrounding lots are elaborately decorated
with paint, found objects (stuffed animals, shoes, hubcaps). The installations are clearly curated,
designed to alter the perception of locally gathered detritus. Illegal dumping often plagues vacant
land, but here it provides fodder for creation. Well known and often visited, the site still lacks
structural influence beyond its perimeter. The collection of buildings extends across two blocks,
accumulating and losing structures through time, but the question of impact remains. It operates
best as a tourist site rather than a driver of community change.27

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290 Journal of Urban History 41(2)

While the spatial post-construction assessment of temporary projects in abandoned landscapes

is an on-going project, it is one that has yet to reveal any measurable before-after results. The
sites continue in limbo, with their installations frozen in time (Philadelphia LandCare, Heidelberg
Project), or returned to their pre-project state (Pop-up City) or having achieved initial results only
to fall back into inertia (Firebreak). As tiny pulses amid a sea of abandonment, their impact is
lost. For the temporary to work as a sustained activator of space with reverberating potential, the
context must be bracketed and relatively vibrant. There are examples in thriving cities of longer-
term effects. The What If allotment gardening program in London has installed eight hundred
temporary plots over six years, occupying vacant paved areas of housing estates. The scale of the
projects is small—two acres—but proportional to available land. Allotment gardens are a prized
entity in the city where land is relatively scarce and expensive. The Proxy project in San Francisco,
a temporary food and cultural venue on the site of the former Central Freeway, designed as a
placeholder building to occupy the site for two to three years, has just secured a ten-year lease
(Proxy).28 The popularity of the project is attracting further vendors and activities. These projects
rely on existing spaces, resources, and populations—capitalizing on available resources—rather
than being asked to catalyze a community, drive change, and address a long-standing structural
problem. Temporary uses respond well to high vacancy and challenging economic times but they
cannot provide long-term restructuring, especially when rooted in ideas-driven artistic practice.
The critique is not of the projects themselves—many are inspiring acts of resurgence and perse-
verance. It is a critique of the expectations of the informal urbanism. Too much weight is placed
on the temporary to meet the opportunities and address the challenges of abandonment. Too little
evaluation, oversight, and support is given to cultivating strong projects. Temporary initiatives
are most often commentaries, provocations, and reactions to the existing condition. They are not
projections of future possibility.

The Overlay Potential

Urban transformation requires action that involves both the temporary and the planned. Ephemeral
spaces are valuable but only in relation to adjacent lasting spaces. Uses need to be stacked to
retain their “cityness,” co-occupying the same physical space. The physical space, itself, needs a
strong identity that can be transformed temporally through adaptable occupations. The well-fig-
ured void must meet the informal practices of enterprising individuals. The former Tempelhof
Airport site in Berlin articulates this final point.
Emerging from a contested past, first as a Nazi-built airport in 1930s and second as an eco-
nomic liability operating at a 15 million euros loss in its final years,29 the nine-hundred-acre site
is a “visionary and futuristic”30 open space in the center of the city. The airport, which closed in
2008, is the subject of an ideological battle over the democratic use of public space. In 2009, five
thousand Berliners attempted “Squat Tempelhof,” a demonstration for turning the site over for
public use rather than private development. After much debate, with its future still uncertain, the
site opened to the public in 2010. Remarkably, it has resisted wholesale redevelopment—seven
hundred acres will remain open space in the development plans—to open as a “public park.”
With minimal design intervention, Tempelhofer Freiheit (Tempelhof Freedom park), as it is offi-
cially called, is advertised as the equivalent of “taking a trip to the countryside without ever hav-
ing to leave the city.”31 Senatsverwaltung für Stadtentwicklung und Umwelt (Berlin Senate’s
Department for Urban Development and the Environment), the agency responsible for the site
planning—due to economic necessity—supports entrepreneurial squatting. Advised by a six-
person team, including landscape architect Klaus Overmeyer, the agency published Urban
Pioneers32 and sees the site as a place to play out interim use as a long-term, visionary develop-
ment strategy.33 Overmeyer, together with the artist and architect Raumlabor and the architect
Michael Braum, worked further on a strategy for activating the Tempelhof site, while the

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Desimini 291

Figure 8.  Tempelhof Airport Park, Summer 2013.

Source: Courtesy of Rachael Cleveland.

landscape architecture firm Gross Max leads a team that won an ideas competition with a scheme
driven by public input and preserving site openness, both spatially and conceptually.
The site is a perfect candidate to explore the long-term potential of loose space. The space is
remarkable, its vastness transcendent, and its ability to welcome multiple uses unparalleled.
There is skating and biking on the runways, protected habitat in-between, bird-watching, com-
munity gardens, art installations, and picnicking (Figure 8). The emptiness is figured. The activi-
ties are supported. The landscape has been given time and space to establish. The site has
measurable benefits both in terms of cultural function and ecological benefits. It is both a large
and highly structured physical space, clearly defined within the city, and an incubator of self-
organized urbanism. Currently, it is a space that is funded and backed by the city but allowed to
develop spontaneously—a top-down commitment to crowd sourcing. Its loose future is in
limbo—again because of more formal impending park and neighborhood development plans—
but the potential for the integration of minimal design tactics with a temporal use overlay is clear.
The thesis: the voids must be designed and constructed before they can be occupied. The tempo-
rary is a successful activator rather than a driver of urban form.

Acknowledgments
The author would like to thank Megan Jones for invaluable research assistance and Daniel Bauer and Robert
Sullivan for their astute edits.

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292 Journal of Urban History 41(2)

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or
publication of this article.

Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publi-
cation of this article: The author would like to thank the Harvard University Graduate School of Design for
research funding and support.

Notes
  1. Philipp Oswalt, Shrinking Cities, Volume 2: Interventions (Ostfildern-Ruit, Germany: Hatje Cantz,
2006), 339.
  2. Philipp Oswalt, Klaus Overmeyer, and Philipp Misselwitz, Urban Catalyst: The Power of Temporary
Use (Berlin: Dom Publishers, 2013), 7.
  3. Margaret Crawford, and Tobias Armborst, “Don’t Obsess About Permanence . . .” in Oswalt et al.,
eds.,Urban Catalyst, 156–65.
  4. Peter Arlt, “What City Planners Can Learn from Temporary Users,” in Urban Catalyst, 80–86.
  5. Oswalt et al., Urban Catalyst, 15.
 6. Ibid.
  7. Natalie Pruett, Phone interview by author (October 12, 2011).
  8. Karen A. Franck and Quentin Stevens, Loose Space: Possibility and Diversity in Urban Life (London:
Routledge, 2007).
  9. Saskia Sassen, “Cityness in the Urban Age,” Urban Age Bulletin 2 (Fall 2005): 1–3.
10. J. K. Gibson-Graham (Julie Graham and Katherine Gibson), A Postcapitalist Politics (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 2006).
11. Andrew Herscher, The Unreal Estate Guide to Detroit (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press,
2012).
12. Franck and Stevens, Loose Space.
13. Sassen, “Cityness in the Urban Age.”
14. Herscher, The Unreal Estate Guide.
15. Jens Lachmund, “Exploring the City of Rubble: Botanical Fieldwork in Bombed Cities in Germany
after World War II,” OSIRIS 18 (2003): 234–54.
16. The Garden, directed by Scott Hamilton Kennedy (Los Angeles, CA: Oscilloscope Pictures, 2009),
DVD.
17. Gilles Clément and Adam Christian, trans., “The Natural History of Forsaken Places,” Harvard Design
Magazine 31 (2009): 40–43.
18. Charles C. Branas, Rose A. Cheney, John M. MacDonald, Vicky W. Tam, Tara D. Jackson, and Thomas
R. Ten Have, “A Difference-in-Differences Analysis of Health, Safety, and Greening Vacant Urban
Space,” American Journal of Epidemiology 174, no. 11 (2011): 1296–1306.
19. Econsult Corporation, Penn Institute for Urban Research, May 8 Consulting, Vacant Land Management
in Philadelphia: The Costs of the Current System and the Benefits of Reform (November 2010),
http://planphilly.com/uploads/media_items/http-planphilly-com-sites-planphilly-com-files-econsult_
vacant_land_full_report-pdf.original.pdf (accessed July 18, 2013).
20. Brent D. Ryan, Design after Decline: How America Rebuilds Shrinking Cities (Philadelphia: University
of Pennsylvania Press, 2012).
21. Oswalt et al., Urban Catalyst.
22. Cathy Lang Ho, “Hold This Site,” Architect Magazine, May 24, 2010, http://www.architectmagazine.
com/development/hold-this-site.aspx (accessed July 23, 2013).
23. Terry Schwartz and Steve Rugare, Pop-up City (Cleveland: Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative,
2009).
24. See Cleveland Urban Design Center, n.d., Pop-Up City Website, http://www.cudc.kent.edu/pop_up_
city/index.html (accessed July 23, 2013).
25. Herscher, The Unreal Estate Guide.

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 Desimini 293

26. Heidelberg Project website, n.d., www.heidelberg.org (accessed July 19, 2013).
27. Since the submission of this article, numerous Heidelberg Project houses have been demolished by
fire, including the iconic Obstruction of Justice and Party Animal Houses. The future of the project
remains uncertain.
28. Proxy website, n.d., http://proxysf.net/ (accessed July 18, 2013).
29. Tim Abrahams, “Tempelhof Airport,” Blueprint 10, no. 283 (2009): 80–85.
30. Elizabeth Krasner, “What Do We Do with This Future? An Examination of Tempelhof Airport,”
Thresholds 38 (2011): 36–39.
31. See Tempelhofer Freiheit website, n.d., http://www.tempelhoferfreiheit.de/en (accessed July 18, 2013).
32. Jill Denton and Senatsverwaltung für Stadtentwicklung (Berlin, Germany), Urban Pioneers (Berlin:
Jovis, 2007).
33. Susanne Isabel Yacoub, “Tempelhofer Freiheit—Interim Use as a Vision,” Topos 77 (2011): 33–37.

Author Biography
Jill Desimini is assistant professor of Landscape Architecture at the Harvard University Graduate School
of Design. She holds Master of Landscape Architecture and Architecture degrees from the University of
Pennsylvania. Her research focuses on reproductive strategies for abandoned urban lands. The work has
been recently featured in the Journal of Landscape Architecture as well as several book chapters.

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