The Conflict of Urban Synchronicity and its Heterotemporalities: Asynchronous Citizenship

Abstract

Amann, Atxu; Delso Gutiérrez, Rodrigo; 'The Conflict of Urban Synchronicity and its Heterotemporalities: Asynchronous Citizenship' en la revista Parse n40, pp.92-107; University of Gothengurg: 2016. ISSN: 2002-02511 Eighteen or 65 years old, 50 years of contributions, three months maternity leave, three-year degrees, 40 hours a week, eight hours a day, two-hour data downloads, 15 minutes away or five hours from the city. Time, in this context, does not only appoint the dissected measure of seconds, minutes or years but provides the syntaxes through which contemporary architecture and urbanism structure the specific spatio-temporalities of cities, buildings, inhabitants and their ways of living. Consequently, the increasing desynchronisation of space and an ongoing synchronisation of time are shaping a process that erodes the diversity of our lives and simultaneously expands the differences between those who can and cannot share the market velocity. In this article, the conflict of synchronicity will be made visible within contemporary cities through the notions of heterogeneity (chronopolitics), power (syncropolitics), repetition (rhythmpolitics) and speed (acceleratiopolitics) as an emerging field of action to be explored by architects, artists or designers.