Impact

The temporary use of vacant lands may also offer a rich and diverse territory within which to accommodate testing of a wide range of uses and processes and their effects. This chapter is looking for the impacts of the tactical urbanism interventions on spatial, social economy and ecology.

4.1 SPATIAL

4.1.1 (Re)developments Planners and developers need to realize that waiting spaces can be seen as an opportunity instead of a threat to the city. Temporary interventions on these sites provide infinite possibilities for a valuable contribution to urban (re)development (Smet, 2013). Using tactical urbanism, urban (re)development can evolve from experimentation to implementation, from temporary to permanent. So decisions can be justified better, and planners and designers gain more confidence in confronting the current unpredictable and uncertain conditions. Temporary use therefore allows for an experimental, practical search for solutions when traditional development strategies fail (Lupo, 2009).

Temporary non-commercial uses attract commercial use. The effect can be immediate, for example, if three quarters of an empty building is rented cheaply to independent theatres and orchestras that bring in an audience, the other quarter can be leased to a restaurateur at a reasonable rent. Place promotion and rise in property value in the long run is a major attraction for property owners and an argument for letting cheaply to temporary users in the first place (Lupo, 2009). 4.1.2 Positive attention Opening these urban vacant land to forms of uses and occupations that are temporary (often very short-term), creating immediate and intermediate benefits that are contextual and flexible, and support an incremental process of urban transformation. This will reassert the role of the temporal, traditionally undermined in discussions of the city in favour of a focus on spatiality (Nemeth, 2013). Temporary uses can activate unused sites, show initiative and progress, and quickly alter the perception of vacant land as derelict, blighted and neglected. The positive activity and perception of vibrancy can quickly create positive attention to abandoned or stalled development sites, significantly increasing their visibility and agency within a neighbourhood.

4.1.3 Image and well being These tactical urbanism interventions they also preserve the area from decay and vandalism and reduce security costs for the owner. Temporary uses may alter the image of the site and give the site a “new address”, previously closed and “forgotten” places can be mentally integrated into the urban fabric. Secondly, the temporary uses often develop a mix of functions to the districts in question, and thus follow the ideals of urban planning that favour heterogeneity. Planners view them as testing grounds where new ideas can be tested. Local residents also tend to view them as legitimate and acceptable ways to make use of a site (Ruoppila, 2004).

4.2 SOCIAL

4.2.1 Social empowerment With their fast production of tangible results, temporary uses can catalyse communities around common goals that serve local needs and not external interests and agendas. The provision of tangible results also contributes to the buy-in and sustained involvement of community rather than the kind of short-term activation typically seen (Nemeth, 2013).

4.2.2 Dynamic Innovations can be sparked from social creativity, in other words by people collective involvement (Lupo, 2009). Waiting zones can offer less dominant users the opportunity to participate in the city life and by having an instant temporary intervention developed, potentially leading to more dynamic and integrated projects. More dynamic since alternative users and activities are provided opportunities for inclusion. Better integrated since the support base for projects is broadened when locals participate in and grow with the transformation process (Smet, 2013).

4.2.3 Social transformations By Tactical urbanism, the ability to work and execute in short time to produce significant impacts, directly and in real time on social transformations, through self-organization in territorial laboratories of networking and involvement of various social stakeholders. Even though the consequences of these actions are temporary, they can still have a long-term and consistent effect. Investing not so much in the physical realm and material realm but intangible aspects such as community building by means of identity and belonging (Lupo, 2009).

4.3 ECOLOGICAL

Vacant land has a lot of potentials to accommodate a wide range of non-human systems that can facilitate significant benefits to urban agglomerations, like providing habitat, improving microclimate and stormwater run-off. These benefits and infrastructural performances are directly related to vegetation that might develop due to a cessation of maintenance system. Temporary uses frequently have a very low impact on emergent successional vegetation, and can even increase vegetative cover on sites used for community gardening or tree farms, both common temporary uses.

Consequentially, the temporary use operate on multiple scales, from an individual lot to a block to a neighbourhood to a city-wide or even regional scale. This multi-scalar approach has so far mostly been practised in the context of stormwater management and to open space and greenway systems. The current discourses on “landscape as infrastructure “start to emphasize the ability of even small parcels to produce significant benefits if they operate within a system that connects them to other lots with similar functions and performances (Nemeth, 2013).

4.4 ECONOMIC

One of the most significant advantages to temporary uses is that no new land acquisition is necessary, eliminating the need for often contentious, long and expensive negotiations over property rights. The reversibility of the use, particularly if they do not involve any or only moderate physical changes can easily be reversed, might compel property owners to allow temporary occupations by right. Temporary uses are also generally inexpensive (figure 3) to implement yet can generate revenue very quickly, benefitting landowners and developers and creating business opportunities for groups that would normally be excluded from occupying vacant land as they lack the capital necessary to engage in more formal, permanent leasing activities (Lupo, 2009). On the scale of the city, temporary use creates a good economic microclimate because it provides input to a dynamic and durable economic microclimate. They form a vital networks and push boundaries to create economic practices that contribute to what is called ‘sustainable disequilibrium’ innovation and flexibility as the source of economy (Rob Vooren, 2003).

Figure3: Simple Tools in TU (Temporary Vacant Lot Activation, n.d.)