{"id":1345,"date":"2010-12-01T12:00:59","date_gmt":"2010-12-01T10:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stealth.ultd.net\/stealth\/updates\/?p=1345"},"modified":"2018-05-29T14:00:43","modified_gmt":"2018-05-29T12:00:43","slug":"constituting-the-interim","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stealth.ultd.net\/?p=1345","title":{"rendered":"Constitution for the Interim"},"content":{"rendered":"

The interim \u2013 the time in which land or buildings rest empty, awaiting a new designation \u2013 is often seen as the last bit of leeway in urban development; a yet partially unexplored and unexploited void in the harsh reality of the city. For long, it has been a pioneering ground for squatters, artists and adventurous citizens. In the past decade however, temporary use increasingly has come into the scope of urban development professionals, as a low-cost strategy for urban marketing and an attractive lever for the increase of real estate value. To clearly position the interim (and temporary use), the Constitution for the Interim<\/em> (Grondwet van de Tussentijd)<\/em>, written in 2009 by STEALTH and Iris de Kievith, grants the interim itself fundamental rights as a much needed enabler for urban dynamics – to secure it as a domain where citizens can take part in the directing and making their city.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Constituting the Interim – as a vital and independent entity of urban time and space<\/p><\/div>\n

[uncharted – and unevenly shared]<\/strong><\/p>\n

For many of its users (from artists or neighbourhood initiatives to start-up companies, for instance) the interim use of warehouses, housing blocks awaiting demolition, urban wastelands, etc. is only a provisional solution, containing an implicit desire to rather hold on to spaces indefinitely, if that would have been possible. However, in the struggle to get access to affordable resources like urban space, little option is left open, even if experience shows that it is the temporary users who generally deliver the largest investment and at the end of the ride hold on to the least. Meanwhile, a misty cloud of romanticism and ‘creativity’ hides the questionable mechanisms deployed in this partially uncharted terrain.<\/p>\n

A decade after the introduction of the creative class (by Richard Florida), time had come\u00a0to pierce the balloon and in the no man’s land of the interim and put things in perspective more clearly. Especially now the interim is even expected to serve as a patch for a lingering crisis.<\/p>\n