Urban policymakers and developers increasingly brand projects as temporary, piloting pop-up parks, art installations, and interim structures across global cities. Initiatives are often framed as experimental interventions that activate vacant sites. In practice, however, they frequently serve as provisional strategies to manage underutilized land until more profitable forms of development materialize. The temporary label functions as urban camouflage, obscuring permanent agendas behind provisional rhetoric.
From London’s Meanwhile London program to New York’s Pop-Up Pool installations, cities are embracing what appears to be experimental urbanism. But what if temporariness itself has become the most durable feature of contemporary city-making? Projects with a promise for impermanence systematically reshape urban landscapes.
