Possibilities of urban research: Temporal difference and the politics of the future

Abstract

Reflecting on Ihnji Jon's contention that urban conflicts emerge from the ‘different conceptualisations of temporality’ that groups of residents hold, this paper considers how urban practitioners might productively engage with time as a situated experience. Specifically, it considers the methodological techniques, forms of collaboration and modes of engagement that enable a focus on the entanglements of past, present and future times which underpin different ways of thinking about urban issues and generate new possibilities for building solidarity in the process. Orientating research enquiries towards non-linear and relational conceptions of time unsettles traditional forms of problem-solving in which historically set goals are prioritised over the exploration of different ideas and trajectories as a means of enacting new urban realities. This requires a commitment to a distinctive way of working in which new ideas, meanings and effects are seen to emerge slowly from a creative and collaborative process of academic engagement, which runs counter to expectations of quick and time-limited interventions in both academia and urban policy and politics.