Pinar presented her plans for the upcoming months - Exploring the urban life (by focusing on space-time trajectories and urban practices) through the rhythms that changed during the Corona pandemic.
Pinar explored her research question finding out that she has been focusing on analyzing and visualizing rhythms and how they relate to each other to be able to propose interventions that adapt to the complexity of urban life.
The corona case study started as a collaboration with the GGD. The project started around three main pressing issues:
- Pressure on the public space, too busy, especially in shopping streets and markets. Hard to manage the activities around shops
- Family and friends meeting, people were meeting too much without keeping the distance.
- Religious events and vacations days, large groups meetings, also generating business on the streets during vacations days
Based on these 3 main pressing issues, Pinar carried out three observational field works:
- Ramadan: visit different Mosques trying to understand what changed before and during Ramadan, this first case was useful to start documenting rhythms and provided the base to Pinar for the other 2 case studies
- Activities in two markets: understanding this meeting and greeting interaction between people and how the market space facilitates that. In Zuidoost, the setting was more critical regarding corona because people used the market to meet with their family and friends.
- Schoolyards / schoolpleinen: the interactions here where different because people were keeping the distance.
Why what is happening in the schoolyards is different than what is happening in the markets? The hypothesis has to do the with rhythms, how people fit the visiting of the schoolyard is different to how they fit their visit to the market in their daily trajectories.
The explorations showed that (these are hypothesis) characteristics of community places are influenced by:
- Personal rhythms of visitors: work hours, weekends, school times…
- Weekly and yearly community rhythms: festive periods, weekly gatherings
- Properties of the urban environment: community size in the neighbourhood, proximity to other facilities, daily, weekly and yearly rhythms of the neighbourhood
Need to better understand the urban practices and interactions in neighbourhoods. Curious about the purpose with which people visit a certain place, because that might define the interactions that happen. To know if the urban practices changed during the pandemic. And that policy makers find difficult to know what is happening in neighborhouods and do not understand the issues that people are facing as well as how to reach out urban residents.
Caroline: picking up children or groceries? What’s the difference? It could be also the layout of the schoolyard and the layout of the market are different.
Pinar: I am not questioning why they are different but how to document these two activities in such a way that the role of the rhythms in the interactions they create can be clear. The physical aspect is one of the factors.
There is a different urgency now in the corona approach. The main issues are:
- The distrust on the government
- There is difficulty of reaching people at the right place / time
- There are difficulties in understanding where people face problems during and after the lockdown.
This time can teach a lot about rhythms, which rhythms are disturbed? Which ones are still alive? Which rhythms do the policy makers need to keep into account when they imposed new regulations? Which rhythms are essential for people? Which ones are shared and which ones bring people together?
Pinar proposed three theories to shape the next phase of the research design:
- The activity of timespaces in practies (Schatzki): practice of visiting a market, a collection of different activities.
- 5 dimensions of time (Southerton): to document the different elements of time like duration, tempos, sequence of activities, periodicity…
- Time as spacemaker (Parkes and Thrift): document the different space-time trajectories
Pinar’s plan is to:
- Understanding space-time trajectories – “In Situ” focus groups, focusing on daily, weekly and yearly rhythms. Identify daily activities, location and time frame.
- Understanding the urban practices – document those practices, interview people on spot
Taking into account three-time frames: before corona, during lockdown and now. The expected outcomes are; 1) to know more about the essential rhythms of people, 2) what are the common rhythms, or 3) similar space-time trajectories.
Questions and discussion about Pinar presentation:
Alessandro: “policy makers do not have clue”- can you elaborate on that? how do you get that conclusion?
Pinar: I am part of the GGD and I am able to attend to their meetings, for instance, the groups that do not want to get vaccinated are mainly in Zuidoost and Nieuw West, but city officers do not how to reach people. And if they do, there is a lot of resistance. The common questions are “how can we reach the young people? But where are the young people?”.
Caroline: this is a very specific and small group within the GGD which focuses on the pandemic and are not prepared to answer those questions, is different from the urban planning groups. This group is not aware of all the capabilities they need.
Achilleas: policy makers do not know about something, but these are very specific example. But what is that they do not know in relation to rhythm? And who is the policy maker in your understanding?
Pinar: I was referring to the policy makers in the health department because they are the ones who have some agency in the corona case. What they do not know about rhythms is to look at the city as something that evolves through time and look at spaces.