Intermediary urban spaces – temporary uses, occupations of vacant land, and informal appropriations – become increasingly relevant in urban developments across European cities. They act as flexible, adaptive nodes within the urban fabric and carry the potential to foster social innovation. Yet, their activation poses complex questions of public security. On one hand, interim spaces support safety by encouraging informal monitoring and creating social presence. On another, their temporary status, ambiguous governance and informality poses specific challenges for policing, safety and control. A set of studies available both in English and German takes stock of the relevant scholarly and practitioner knowledge. They summarize existing findings, identify lacunas and shortcomings, and chart ways ahead for the creation of a more holistic body of knowledge centering on the security politics of interim urban spaces.
Gallery: Typology of interim urban spaces (excerpt)
Betschart, Thomas; Hagmann, Jonas (2025). Safeguarding interim urban spaces: the scholarly state of the art. Basel: Kantons- und Stadtentwicklung Basel-Stadt, 29p. PDF/ URL
Betschart, Thomas; Hagmann, Jonas (2025). Safeguarding interim urban space: a review of practitioner knowledge. Basel: Kantons- und Stadtentwicklung Basel-Stadt, 24p. PDF / URL
Betschart, Thomas; Hagmann, Jonas (2025). Die Gestaltung von sicheren Zwischennutzungen: Ein Überblick der wissenschaftlichen Literatur. Basel: Kantons- und Stadtentwicklung Basel-Stadt, 32p. PDF / URL
Betschart, Thomas; Hagmann, Jonas (2025). Sichere Zwischennutzungen gestalten. Ein Überblick über das Wissen aus der Praxis. Basel: Kantons- und Stadtentwicklung Basel-Stadt, 24p. PDF / URL
In 1975–1976, Lebanon and the city of Beirut were consumed by devastating armed conflict. But whereas this empirical fact is uncontested, its historical causes and political meanings remain controversial. Sara Fregonese’s book War and the Cityfocuses on the rationalisation of the conflict and asks: Do Western descriptions of the war live up to the realities observed in Beirut? War and the City puts the spotlight on important political practices, which are the ways actors co-construct meaning in and through their own urban environments, and how those interpretations may develop differently from far-away truth claims. This said, the book also includes (exceedingly) structuralist narratives, and it raises important questions about whose perspectives (in Beirut) are listened to and heard. Furthermore, its treatments of works from related disciplines – security studies and International Relations especially – is underdeveloped if not outright crude.
:: Jonas Hagmann :: 