Time-Based Participatory Urbanism
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https://doi.org/10.24306/TrAESOP.2026.02.008Published
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Copyright (c) 2026 Ardalan Tayefehhosseinlou
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Participation-in-use, Transitional Phases, Deliberate Incompleteness, Urban Temporality, Minimally Intrusive Interventions (MIIs)Abstract
Urban interventions do not end at installation; their meanings and uses develop through repeated encounters over time. When this temporal unfolding is overlooked, participatory planning is narrowed to discrete stages and misses the negotiations that occur through use. This paper argues that participation can be understood not only as a planned event or phase, but also as participation-in-use: the ongoing reinterpretation and negotiation of an intervention through everyday interaction. Through a design-led conceptual inquiry, it develops the notion of Minimally Intrusive Interventions: small-scale, materially modest, reversible, and interpretatively open elements that invite non-prescribed use and remain adjustable as situated feedback accumulates. By foregrounding transitional periods in the life of an intervention, the paper proposes a time-aware design disposition that keeps learning, adaptation, and recalibration possible without presuming a final end-state. In this sense, incompleteness is framed as a deliberate strategy for inclusive engagement across shifting users, rhythms, and institutional constraints.
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