The long-term consequences of temporary urbanism. Effects on place identity negotiation and instrumentalization of public participation

The last decades have seen occidental european cities calendars and spaces more and more invested by a variety of ephemeral occurrences. under the banner of “temporary urbanism”, - some of these events are seasonal and fated to repeat themselves, such as christmas markets or music festivals. Others, under the name of “transitional” or “tactical urbanism” are more isolated and linked to a particular place or neighbourhood and its possible transformation, as can be seen some initiatives taken on urban wastelands or abandoned buildings. While both the dynamics are the subject of many researches, few analyze those as part of the same movement, as they emerge from different contexts and don’t necessarily concern the same publics. This paper aims to contribute to fill this gap in the litterature by looking at two of those contemporary initiatives (“Bavière en Route” and “Village de Noël”, Liège, Belgium) as processes of place identity negotiation, echoing with the concept of épreuve as coined by Boltanski and Thévenot (1991). This allows to observe similar long term consequences of those temporary initiatives on the perennial existence and physical transformations of the concerned spaces, allowing to consider the rise of an overarching furtive/surreptitious urbanism. This furtive urbanism silently manipulates socio-historical imaginaries of places, whether willingly or unwillingly, contributing to the instrumentalization of public participation to urban transformation debates with the aim to reduce public expenditure and maximize the local attraction of wealth at the expense of less profitable imaginaries, activities and populations.