Layers of urban rhythms

Urban velocities study started with creating a preliminary outline of the process. Given the wide range of different urban velocities and related topics such as time, duration and all the urban processes, it was important to find out which aspects and ways of investigating them would be most relevant. It was decided that it would be relevant to find out how these speeds determine the quality of certain spaces and life in a broad sense. For this purpose, 3 types of universal spaces were chosen – the park, the square and the active street – which can be found in the cities under study – Vilnius, Helsinki and Copenhagen (and not only). These points of interest are similar in size, urban character, position in the city and have an abundance of ‘layers’ of different speeds.

Based on Lefebvre’s collection of essays “Rhythmanalysis: Space, Time and Everyday Life”, the concept of rhythm in a social context (e.g., people’s visits to certain places, information flows, changes in fashion) can also be seen in terms of velocities, which adds an extra dimension to the research, by measuring velocities in terms of feelings, events, phenomena, rather than just in terms of units. Based on the concepts of polyrhythmia (coexisting rhythms), arrhythmia (conflicting rhythms) and eurhythmia (complementary rhythms), these can be seen as often invisibly determining the chaotic, harmonious, individual or contradictory character of a given space. It is also interesting that the ‘linear’ (unidirectional, e.g. radio broadcast) and ‘cyclical’ (e.g. sunrise in the morning) rhythms identified in Lefebvre’s work encourage us to think about a similar categorisation of urban speeds. The author argues that the abundance of linear rhythms disturbs cyclical rhythms, and it could be relevant to test this in urban processes.

With this inspiration in mind, it was important to identify the essential layers of urban velocities in the selection of city points. It is true that some of them do not have a direct physical expression of speed (i.e. it would be difficult to describe them in terms of metres per second), but they nevertheless accurately describe the abundance that one wants to reflect on in order to create the clearest possible picture of all the selected spaces. This has opened up the possibility of describing certain speeds in alternative units (e.g. internet connectivity in terms of books per second, etc.) and experimenting with them. The aim was thus to name, categorise (for easier visualisation) and assign associative symbols to these layers of speeds, which could serve as a kind of ‘dictionary’ to read the visual representation, supplemented by discoveries made from physical presence (not just theoretical investigation) in these places.

In order to compare the velocity layers of the three space types, this ‘vocabulary’ and its representation is translated into visual representation formats, such as drawing, sketching and collage. Of course, although the representation is schematic, sketch-like and associative, the exact locations of the velocity elements remain – they are crucial for discovering the places where certain indicators of slowness or speed cluster together, or, on the other hand, create an imbalance of speed. It is also important to note that layers such as textures – reflective, light absorbing, organic or not – in the speed ‘maps’, the representations are interpreted through my prism as a researcher, and therefore some of the information is very subjective – perhaps I am driven by one material to go slower, and others to go faster. Certain layers are better understood in section and others in spatial representation, so several representations are chosen to fill this comparison.

It is hoped that this representation, and ultimately comparison, will provide insights into how combinations of urban velocities determine the life of the spaces that almost every city has. Perhaps this observation could lead to patterns and guidelines that would provide another way to ‘read’ the complexity of cities and rethink the processes of both space creators and inhabitants that inevitably create slow or fast urban places. Of course, this model of thinking could also be applied to a follow-up experiment – a provocation that moves into real or fictional manipulation of space.