Temporalities and varieties of territorial representation

The chapter presents, on one hand, the two main examples of the recent history, representative of two different approaches to spatial-temporal phenomena: one analytical, detailed and descriptive (school of time geographers, launched in 1953 by Torstein Hägerstrand, in Lund, Sweden), the other synthetic, perceptive and oriented to intervention (at MIT in Cambridge (USA), Kevin Lynch introduced the temporal aspects in urban planning). On the other hand, the chapter describes an abacus representing urban temporalities reviewing different kinds of images used in urban time policies, geography and urban planning and reflecting on which timeframe it highlights. This is a way to discuss the iconic apparatus and the technical tools needed to describe the urban rhythms. Finally, three open questions for research and practice are highlighted: the different declinations of temporality put under the lens of observation; the necessity of recurrent use of dynamic maps, which introduce the time through a simple sequence of images; if the analytical and design interests for space-time allow to bring the phenomenology of the lived experiences and those of place in the rationality of maps.