This PhD is based on an action-research project developed at FAUP and CEAU under the supervision of Professor Teresa Calix and Professor Ana Fernandes. For two years, the research was hosted by the Laboratorio di Architettura e Autocostruzione at DIDA, under the supervision of Professor Leonardo Zaffi.

The PhD was funded by Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia through a four-year fellowship and was discussed on 16 July 2025. It is currently being developed into a book. For any further information, feel free to get in touch. In the meantime, you can find the abstract below:

Recently, an approach to urbanism has emerged that uses temporality as a possibility for experimentation and the inclusion of multiple actors as a democratic manifestation. The interventions utilizing this approach, perhaps defined as tactical urbanism or meanwhile uses, modify the urban as a process and not as a project, trying to transform local contexts with globally reproducible tools: glocal. The argument of this dissertation is that temporary actions are the most suitable tools for implementing a democratic production of urban spaces. This thesis proposes to investigate the promoters, the nature and the results of these interventions, with the objective of understanding the limit between the democratic potential and the perpetuation of a neoliberal production of space. Three case studies will be analyzed: the Orizzontale collective (Rome), the Meanwhile Space CIC (London) and the New York Department of Transportation.

This work intends to contribute to the evolution of the concept of urban commons and to the innovation of architecture and urbanism disciplines through the definition of collaborative tools for sociospatial production.