Staging temporary spaces

This chapter analyses the performative urban experiences produced by temporary projects and their claim to publicness and openness to local communities. Through a critical discussion of the promises of ‘vibrancy’ and community engagement, it examines the importance of staging in temporary urban spaces, its co-optation and its everyday, contested performative encounters. The chapter draws extensively on participant observations of temporary projects in the Elephant and Castle shopping centre during the last decade before its final closure. The frictions between staged and unexpected urban encounters challenge the celebration of ‘use value’ as inherently beyond commodification. It reveals the need to attend carefully to local power entanglements and to the potential role of temporary uses in solidarity movements against demolition and displacement.