When sharing rhythm, people feel more at ease with each other. Such rhythms can be mundane for example in the activities we do every day: bringing the kids to school, walking the dog, being in the same train going to work, putting out the garbage, and so on. These mundane rhythms of everyday life are at the heart of sustaining and shaping trust (Nevejan 2011). As an example, the local policeman who passes by the school every day so that the parents can easily approach him, generates trust. The opposite, not sharing rhythms while sharing the same environment, can be unpleasant and generates distrust. Based on a larger research trajectory, ‘City Rhythm’ (Nevejan et al 2018), this chapter addresses an underlying research question as to whether it is possible to analyse and identify rhythms in the physical and social environment in order to enhance the sense of trust in specific neighbourhoods. In doing so, it draws upon preliminary research on social cohesion in a city neighbourhood in the Netherlands (Den Hengst et al 2014). Underlying this study was the discrepancy that people do not feel safer even when crime figures go down. According to the Veiligheidsmonitor (the safety monitor used by Dutch municipalities), subjective safety is as big a problem as objective safety, revealing the gap between the experience of safety and the data on safety. In light of this, the preliminary study assumed that social cohesion and trust between residents affect the sense of safety. For this prior work a specific methodology, the YUTPA framework, was used. YUTPA is an acronym for ‘You in Unity of Time, Place and Action’, referring to the original and physical state in which people meet (Nevejan 2007). Online realities merge with offline presence in personal, public and professional experience. Information and Communication Technologies format people’s presence and as a result new ways for establishing trust emerge. The YUTPA framework was developed to shed light on trade-offs for trust that emerge in these merging realities (Nevejan & Brazier 2017).
Results of the previous study show that one of the factors, ‘integrating rhythm’, is significant for enhancing the social cohesion in a neighbourhood. Taking a normative approach, we can show how sharing rhythms enhances trust. These findings outline the importance of recognizing and engaging with rhythms in an urban environment. The lack of rhythms (non-matching, non-shared, non-tuned rhythms) result in lower social cohesion and a lower sense of safety. Simply speaking, in the urban environment people need common rhythms to be able to engage with other people.
This chapter first presents three different case studies in Zaanstad, Amsterdam and Rotterdam in which three main rhythm dynamics are identified: ‘balancing rhythms’, ‘matching rhythms’ and ‘tuning rhythms’. Each of the case studies combine elements of key literature, which help articulate how various rhythm theories are relevant for the understanding of urban contexts. Rhythm is in the first place understood as ‘variation in a pattern’ (Huijer 2015), which is to make a distinction between mechanical and rhythmic patterns. As the chapter proceeds, further theoretical explorations discuss ‘rhythm as urban territory’ and ‘rhythm as force for engagement’. Overall the chapter identifies a gap in methodology for establishing rhythm analyses. As such, the City Rhythm methodology is proposed, which is distilled from the case studies and literatures and is also constructed on the basis of insight from the social sciences and architecture. In conclusion, the chapter argues that rhythm analyses can open up unanticipated space for design solutions and as such affect policymaking as well. The unanticipated spaces for design solutions emerge because rhythm analysis is used as a ‘boundary object’ in social/urban contexts through which then unexpected intervention spaces can be discovered (Star & Griesemer 2010). As a term from Science and Technology Studies, the term ‘boundary object’ refers to the fact that different stakeholders with different knowledge, skill and perspective, can share differences in a constructive way by discussing one object. This, for example, is the boundary object that functions on the boundary between disciplines. What follows, then, is a reading of how ‘city rhythms’ can work as a boundary object to foster greater understanding of urban living and its development; seeking shared engagement between different actors and stakeholders in a given city environment or context. Â