Urban Rhythms

The recent availability of longitudinal data on individual trip making and activity behaviour has provided analysts with new insights into the structures and motives of daily life travel. Multi-week travel diary data-sets and GPS observations are exciting sources of information for the description and modelling of the variability of individual travel patterns. Through an analysis of these strong new data sets, this book questions what are the most suitable methodological tools to represent the structures of long-term travel behaviour. It also examines what the data tells us about the travellers' motives and looks at how planning should translate the findings into forecasting tools and transport strategies. In doing so, the multifaceted and ambiguous character of daily life travel is revealed, illustrating how, while sound routines in time and space seem to dominate daily life, individuals show a considerable amount of variability and flexibility in travel and activity behaviour.

This book focuses on the creation of space as an activity. The argument draws not only on aspects of movement in time, but also on a cultural and specifically social context influencing the creation of the spatial habitus. The book reconsiders existing theories of time and space in the field of urban planning and develops an updated account of spatial activity, experience and space-making. Recent developments in spatial practice, specifically related to new technologies, make this an important and timely task. Integrating spatial-temporal dynamics into the way we think about cities aids the implementation of sustainable forms of urban planning. The study is composed of two different case studies. One case is based on fieldwork tracking individual movement using GPS, the other case utilises data mined from Twitter. One of the key elements in the conclusion to this book is the definition of temporality as a status rather than a transition. It is argued that through repetitive practices as habitus, time has presence and agency in our everyday lives. This book is based on the work undertaken for a PhD at the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis and was and accepted as thesis by University College London in 2013.

Sara Adhitya is an urban designer and Research Associate with the Accessibility Research Group at UCL. Awarded a European Doctorate in the 'Quality of Design' of Architecture and Urban Planning by the University IUAV of Venice and the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris, she draws on her multidisciplinary background in environmental design, architecture, urbanism, music and sound design, in her interactive and multisensorial approach to urban design. She collaborates with a range of non-profit and governmental organizations around the world towards improving urban liveability and sustainability through participatory design and planning.

This insightful collection of papers on the contemporary cityscape explores the rhythms of urban flows, temporalities and interactions. It interprets the city as a complex whole, interwoven with networks and constant movement, and offers case studies of global metropolises from Manchester to Rio de Janeiro, Cardiff to Jakarta. Wide-ranging interdisciplinary analysis Combines urban theory with informed empirical research Includes studies of cities across the urbanizing world, from Rio de Janeiro to Jakarta A profound and engaging commentary on the constantly evolving rhythms of the city

The post-industrial city of the global urban era is seen to be defined by increasingly complex social, spatial and temporal relations, characterized by conditions of change and uncertainty, exception and opportunity. This book seeks to explore and critique such conditions, both as the current state of the urban and with regards to claims of current urban theory and research. The various contributions gathered here represent contrasting approaches to understanding the city, drawing as they do from multiple, and inter, disciplinary perspectives. They also draw from a global range of cities, some which might be considered global cities too. Each paper shares a commitment to elucidating and exploring the complexity of the contemporary metropolis via a (re)consideration of the rhythmic and, increasingly, polyrhythmic nature of everyday urban life. In introducing the papers of this collection, we offer something of a contextualization of the emergence and transformation of the (poly)rhythmicities which underscore the post-industrial city.