Timespace matters

It is important to know about peoples' temporospatial activity patterns when making urban and regional designs and plans. Despite wide acknowledgment of this idea, knowledge about people's activity patterns does not get full attention in day-to-day practice of urban and regional design and planning. This book makes the case that, with activity patterns of people changing nowadays, this subject deserves full attention within the domain of urban and regional design and planning. Understanding how the societal organisation of time relates to the societal organisation of space is key to answering the questions put to designers and planners about the future development of cities and urban regions.

'Timespace matters' contains a detailed analysis of two promising approaches of putting time in the picture of urban and regional design and planning: the use of tracking technologies such as GPS and the times-of-the-city approach developed in Italy, Germany and France. It explores the borders between the domains of social geography and of urban and regional design and planning.

The book is of interest to planners and designers, researchers and educators in both geography and planning. It has been inspired by two questions that are at the heart of urban and regional design and planning (stedebouwkunde). Paraphrasing Torsten Hägerstrand, the founder of 'time geography': What about people in urban and regional design and planning? And, referring to the work of Kevin Lynch: What about time in urban and regional design and planning?

Jeroen van Schaick has previously compiled and edited books on network urbanism and on the introduction of tracking technologies in urban design. He works both in planning practice as well as in academia bridging borders between knowledge domains.