Summary
Today’s cities pulse to the rhythm of minutes – from “15-minute cities” to “5-minute walks”. But what if we could imagine cities where natural rhythms, contemplation, and quality of stay take precedence over efficiency?

Drawing on Lefebvre’s «Right to the City» (1-3) and its concept of the «urban oeuvre» as the ultimate lived urban experience, the Nominute.City research initiative proposes a radical rethinking of urban space-time as a commons through the lens of what I term «urban endemism». The project challenges the efficiency-oriented narrative still dominant in urbanism by identifying and investigating place-specific phenomena that prioritize care over exploitation, conviviality over competition, commoning over privatization (4), and ultimately human and planetary wellbeing over narrow efficiency metrics.

The study adopts a phenomenological approach informed by three complementary theoretical frameworks: Manzini’s (5) concept of «fluidity» to understand temporal resilience, Lefebvre’s notion of «underground urban life» to recognize alternative social practices, and Gilles Clément’s ecological concept of endemism from his «Jardin Planétaire» (6-7).

Through this tripartite lens, the research examines socio-spatial configurations that thrive at the intersection of unique temporality and locality. Through my «Space, Place and Community» model (8), the project studies how these urban phenomena manifest as heterotopic counter-spaces that rewrite dominant narratives, developing alternative practices and ethics of care that can spread transformatively while respecting local distinctiveness. This framework addresses three key challenges: post-growth transformation, demographic change and climate resilience:

Post-Efficiency as an Urban Paradigm
Automation and AI are challenging traditional notions of productivity and urban efficiency, while commodification and increased leisure create new pressures on shared spaces. Nominute.City explores how cities can evolve from centres of commercial exploitation to regenerative commons that balance collective wellbeing and leisure with ecological restoration, while preventing overuse of shared resources. By studying urban endemics, the research identifies alternative temporalities that challenge growth-oriented paradigms while creating stable yet permeable structures for community resilience.

Multi-Generational Cities
Demographic shifts due to changing birth rates and increasing longevity require new urban approaches. Nominute.City explores how urban systems can support the diverse temporalities of a multi-generational population by creating environments that balance active exchange with qualities of rest and presence, enabling both extended active lifespans and attractive conditions for young families, while fostering intergenerational care networks. Through the lens of urban endemics, Nominute.City focuses on bottom-up urban phenomena where different generational temporalities can coexist and learn from each other.

Climate Resilience
Climate change increases adaptation pressures on socio-urban systems, with particular impacts on vulnerable populations. Research will explore how ecological cycles and changing climate patterns can be aligned with social behaviours to ensure climate-resilient urban systems that serve both human well-being and planetary health. Urban endemics, with their distinctive blend of temporal fragility and cyclical resilience, provide compelling models for adaptation and regeneration in a changing climate.

Methodological Innovation
The project integrates phenomenological observation, humanistic citizen science and experimental methods to understand urban temporality as an interplay between natural cycles, social rhythms and regenerative practices, using the Urban Endemism Manifesto as a framework for case study selection and analysis.

Conceptual Innovation
The research develops a theoretical framework combining phenomenology, systems thinking and post-growth approaches to reconceptualise Lefebvrian urban use value through the lens of temporality and endemism, promoting intergenerational urban commons and ecological regeneration while respecting the place-rootedness of urban phenomena.

Practical Innovation
The initiative develops post-growth metrics and instruments for climate-resilient, inclusive urban development and education that help establish collective urban governance while preventing the exploitation of common resources, drawing inspiration from the transformative potential of urban endemics to rewrite dominant narratives of urban development.

Contextualisation and Critical Perspective
Nominute.City positions itself within the context of contemporary placemaking, while taking a critical stance towards current developments in the built environment, as observed in the context of investment-driven real estate development or the gentrification and commercialisation of public space through proprietary smart city approaches.

At the same time, the architectural-technological renewal of urban space and its connection to digitally-enabled service models has the potential to constructively and innovatively address many of the challenges described in Nominute.City. This creates a field of tension between the technology-driven renewal of urban space and the historically evolved cultural layer, particularly visible in vernacular urban spaces.

To sharpen the research approach of Nominute.City, models emerging from this field of tension are also considered: for example, the four-dimensional Placemaking Model of the Project for Public Spaces (PPS), the New European Bauhaus (NEB) Impact Model for Climate Positive Cities, or the Vernacular Heritage Sustainable Architecture (VERSUS) assessment method. These models provide important links for developing a contemporary understanding of urban livability in the context of the temporality newly conceived in Nominute.City.

Complementing these models, which focus primarily on the material basis of the built environment, the Inner Development Goals model is applied in the context of the relationship between individual, community and place. This allows factors such as presence to be positioned as a counterpoint to efficiency, and explores how such models can contribute to looking at cities and the design of urban spaces through an alternative lens.

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