Mara Ferreri, Andreas Lang // Notes from the Temporary City

Notes from the Temporary City takes you on a tour of a neighbourhood on the cusp of change. It provides a complex picture of the dynamics reshaping contemporary London, from the pressure of market forces to new structures of governance and the ingenuity of its residents. Ferreri and Lang's Hackney Wick has the power of synecdoche – it speaks of a wider metropolitan condition where temporary uses are entangled in the desire to both break from capitalist urbanisation and profit from it. Rather than a catalogue of good practices, this book provides something much more compelling and necessary for the analysis of temporary use – a trajectory of disagreements, deviations and paths not taken. Isaac Marrero-Guillamón