The pace of life and temporal resources in a neighborhood of an edge city

Abstract

Recently, the phenomenon of social acceleration, which has profound impacts on everyday life, has attracted some attention from social scientists. At the same time, an increased engagement with social practices that are related to slowing down has also been highlighted, thereby unveiling an inherent tension between fast and slow times in contemporary societies. However, little attention has been paid to how fast and slow times are spatially dispersed and rooted.

This study contributes to current discussions on the pace of life by considering the dynamics of speeding up and slowing down in the everyday life of residents in a neighborhood of an edge city and the role played by local resources in the performance of everyday life practices. We undertook our study in the Colinas do Cruzeiro neighborhood, in the municipality of Odivelas in the North of Lisbon’s metropolitan area, where we conducted 21 in-depth narrative interviews with residents with the purpose of understanding the spatiotemporal organization of their daily lives and the role of the neighborhood’s resources.

Our results identify four different timestyles among the interviewees, all of them fluctuating between fast and slow temporalities in different ways. Thereafter, we identify and describe the main practices of speeding up and slowing down in the interviewees’ everyday life and the local resources, which are mobilized in Colinas do Cruzeiro in order to perform these practices. We give some conclusions after a brief discussion of the results. Our main argument is that local resources play a vital role in an individual’s ability to speed up or slow down and therefore more attention must be paid as to how local resources can become temporal advantages.

Keywords

Social acceleration slow time pacemaker temporal resources everyday practices

Introduction

The phenomenon of social acceleration has been acknowledged in the last decades (Eriksen, 2001; Harvey, 1991) and recently it has become a central issue in the social sciences as its impacts on contemporary societies are becoming inescapable (Rosa, 2013; Rosa and Scheuerman, 2009). While current technologies have permitted increasingly faster flows of information, capital, goods, and people, they have benefited certain social groups, often at the expense of others, creating or aggravating issues of spatial disparity and time poverty (Schwanen and Kwan, 2012). In many aspects of daily life, speeding up becomes essential in order to keep up with the demands of work, family, and leisure (Southerton, 2003). On the other hand, the perceived time pressure has lead to the emergence of movements that argue against social acceleration and propose acts of slowing down or downshifting to pursue a better quality of life (Parkins, 2004; Pink, 2008; Thomas, 2008). Simultaneously, these changes have also deepened a long-term process of time commodification as businesses realize time is a fundamental resource in the life of individuals. It has now become possible to acquire goods and services, which allow one to buy time, or to consume goods or spaces in order to spend time as one wishes (Adam, 2004; Arnould, 2005).

Our study seeks to understand the dynamics of speeding up and slowing down in the everyday life of residents in a neighborhood of an edge city and the role played by local resources in the performance of everyday life practices. By means of this research, we intend to tackle a significant gap in the literature regarding the spatial dynamics of fast and slow times. Our thesis is that practices of speeding up and slowing down are deeply rooted in place since local temporal resources are fundamental in an individual’s ability to accelerate or decelerate. We follow the concept of resource put forward by consumer culture theory (Arnould, 2005; Baron and Warnaby, 2011; Vargo and Lusch, 2004), which advocates that resources are mobilized toward the performance of a practice. Therefore, in line with Latour’s (2005) arguments for a relational perspective on human agency, we understand local temporal resources in a broad way, and these may include elements as diverse as retail and service shops, transports, public space elements, among others.

We conducted our study in the Colinas do Cruzeiro neighborhood, in the municipality of Odivelas in the North of Lisbon’s metropolitan area. Colinas do Cruzeiro is a recent real estate project aimed at the middle class, which began inhabiting it in 2004. It is a high-density residential space with a marked presence of retail and service shops, which are located in close proximity to a highway granting fast access to Lisbon and its suburbs. The public space of the urbanization is pedestrian friendly, with large sidewalks and some amenities such as children’s playgrounds, and green spaces geared to sports and walking. For these reasons, Colinas do Cruzeiro provides an optimal terrain in which to address the role of local temporal resources in the practices of its residents’ daily lives. We conducted 21 in-depth narrative interviews with residents, with the purpose of understanding the spatiotemporal organization of their daily lives and the role of the neighborhood’s resources. In addition, we conducted 17 interviews with local stakeholders and carried out a yearlong direct observation of the rhythms of the neighborhood’s public space.

In the next sections, we will discuss current advances in pace of life research, especially regarding the opposition between fast and slow temporalities. Afterward, we will address the processes of time commodification, which make the relation between timestyles and local temporal resources relevant. We will then present the methodology followed and the results of the study. Our results show how there are distinct time-space profiles among the residents of Colinas do Cruzeiro, which contain different moments for speeding up and slowing down. In each of these moments, we identify a series of resources that are activated by the residents to perform daily life activities. A discussion of this study’s implications will follow.

Fast and slow times

City life has, for a long time, been associated with speed. Back in 1903, the psychosocial analyst Georg Simmel already argued that “with every crossing of the street, with the tempo and multiplicity of economic, occupational and social life,” urban life was “a deep contrast with the slower, more habitual, more smoothly flowing rhythm of the (…) small town and rural existence” (Simmel, 2002: 11–12). Nevertheless, it has been noted that the last decades have corresponded to an unprecedented increase in the acceleration of social processes (Rosa, 2013; Rosa and Scheuerman, 2009). For Urry (2009), the social and political changes of the last centuries have produced three distinct sociotemporalities, which still coexist today.

The first of these stems from the instauration of “clock time” in the industrial age (Urry, 2009). During this period, as Adam (2004: 113–114) puts it:

The machine time supplanted (but never eradicated) the experiential understanding of time as change—as growth and ageing, seasonal variation, the difference between the past and the future—and shifted the experience and meaning of time towards invariability, quantity and precise motion expressed by number.

The change from a sense of a natural time toward a quantitative appreciation of duration also marks a rupture in the cyclic sociotemporality and the beginning of the hegemony of a linear sense of time (Lefebvre, 2004). While prior to the industrial age, the rhythms of social life were set by the cycles of nature and agriculture, the instauration of clock time, and the technological advances in the production of goods turned the table. Time becomes a human artifact, and the linear rhythms of the industrial society begin marking the pace of agricultural production (Moskowitz, 2009; Thompson, 1967). For Zerubavel (1985), the evolution of the schedule is equally important, as all social activities become time framed in a rigid manner through this organizational device. Clock time, then, corresponds to a sense of time expressed by number, with a highly rigid sense of duration.

In the late 20th century, another shift in sociotemporalities occurs with the advent of what Urry (2009) calls «instantaneous time». For Rosa (2013), the new technologies of communication and transport form the basis for contemporary social acceleration, but social acceleration is also promoted by economic and cultural agents. Rosa (2013) goes on to point out that social acceleration expresses itself through the acceleration of social change and the acceleration of the pace of life. Regarding the general speeding up of the pace of life, an interesting study comes from Southerton (2009) who compares data from 1937 and 2000 and concludes that, in the latter year, issues of time squeezing in the coordination of daily life activities are much more prominent. Many other studies have broached the issue of time squeeze, i.e. the allocation of too many activities in the available time frames, which leads to a need for speeding up. The demands of working life are a central cause of the need for speeding up (Ulferts et al., 2013), but it is especially the conciliation between working and private life, which creates profound difficulties in time coordination (Dommergues and Delfour, 2003; Southerton, 2003). The need to manage different time-demanding activities leads to a polychronic sense of time, in which one has to keep several operations going at the same time (Adams and van Eerde, 2012; Hall, 1990). Information and communication technologies, which have become pervasive in everyday life (Dodge et al., 2009), play a significant role in sustaining this polychronicity. Their effect, however, is twofold. On the one hand, they allow constant communication, contributing to maintaining intimate ties even over large distances (Castells, 1996; Ger, 2005). On the other hand, the instantaneity these technologies allow also provokes a detemporalization of time as every demand becomes present (Leccardi, 2007).

While clock time and instantaneous time have worked toward the acceleration of everyday life, their impact is not absolute. As expressed in the above quote by Adam (2004), an experiential understanding of time as change has never been lost, and remains as what Urry (2009) calls «glacial time». Other authors, such as Eriksen (2001) and Agger (2004), have pointed out that despite the acceleration of social processes, the need for slowness not only remains but is also exacerbated by the pressure of fastness. It has been made evident how this is expressed in the media and consumer culture through a valorization of practices of downshifting, i.e. the reduction of working time and subsequent increase of social and family time (Ballard and Webster, 2008; Thomas, 2008). On the other hand, a series of social movements such as the Slow Food, the Slow Movement or the Cittàslow have been advocating against the acceleration of the pace of life (Knox, 2005; Parkins, 2004; Pink, 2008; Vergunst and Verhemen, 2012). Slow time has been commonly tied to sustainable means of production and consumption, which are based on local and communitarian networks instead of global commerce (Knox, 2005; Pink, 2008). On the other hand, it has also been associated with family and social cohesion values and the importance of caring for others and spending quality time together (Parkins, 2004; Urry, 2009). Following Crang’s (2007: 84) arguments, our intention here is not to:

counterpose frenetic speed to some rounded, authentic, everyday time of the past, but rather to suggest our daily rounds are always made up of, and shot through, different temporalities that have long been subject to a variety of temporal and spatial modulations.

Furthermore, as Urry (2009) himself argues, these temporalities are hybrid and interact in complex ways with each other. Despite this, the dichotomy between fast and slow time is a significant one in contemporary societies, and it has fueled a series of policies regarding work–life conciliation and the management of urban times through the regulation of working hours and service and retail schedules (Henckel et al., 2013; Mückenberger, 2011; Torres et al., 2007). However, there is still a lack of knowledge about how the amenities of urban space function as temporal resources in the everyday life of city dwellers.

Fast time, a result of clock time and instantaneous time, differs greatly from slow—or glacial—time. Therefore, when performing fast or slow times, individuals put different resources into use. It is therefore important to understand how relations between individuals and urban space occur when performing practices associated with one (or more) of these temporalities. In the next section, we will review the current literature on this matter and conceptualize the role of temporal resources.

Temporal resources and the city

The analysis of the changes of contemporary temporalities becomes more relevant due to the fact that a parallel process of time commodification occurs. This is a process that establishes itself in the industrial age, alongside the advancement of clock time. Until that period, the Christian conception of time as an artifact of God prevented one from profiting from time (Adam, 2004). The shift toward a more secular mercantile society led to the abandonment of such conceptions and a notion that time is money emerged, due to the establishment of interest rates on capital and the introduction of work paid by the hour (Adam, 2004).

In contemporary societies, as practices of consumption have become an intrinsic part of the everyday lives of individuals (Baudrillard, 1998 [1970]; Miller, 2008; Paterson, 2006), the linkage between time and money deepens. Firms have become aware that time is a fundamental resource for individuals (Eriksen, 2001; Kaufman-Scarborough and Lindquist, 2003; Arnould, 2005). As a result, it has become possible to acquire time in various ways. First, time can be bought symbolically through products when the consumption of a given product is associated with the temporality of a practice (Ger and Kravets, 2009; Miller, 2009). On the other hand, one can also buy devices that allow one to save time (Adam, 2004) or even resort to outsourcing activities such as housework by purchasing the time and skills of others (Schober, 2013).

Given these possibilities, Arnould (2005) argues that products and services act as temporal resources when they allow individuals to enact their preferred timestyles. Arnould (2005) interprets this relation as an interplay between operant and operand resources. According to Vargo and Lusch (2004), individuals possess a series of operant resources, which they mobilize toward the performance of everyday practices. These resources are understood by Vargo and Lusch (2004) in a broad way, and include diverse aspects such as cultural and social capital, or the available time.¹ These personal resources that individuals possess and mobilize, which are generally intangible, are operant because they also mobilize a series of more tangible operand resources—generally external to the body—in the performance of everyday practices, such as objects, technologies, or spaces. Time is also subject to these dynamics as it is an operant resource that consumers own and can dispose of, while still needing specific operand resources to perform their preferred timestyles (Arnould, 2005; Kaufman-Scarborough and Lindquist, 2003; Schatzki, 2009; Shove, 2009). In other words, speeding up and slowing down depend on the mobilization of a series of operant and operand resources.

However, it has become clear that temporal resources cannot be separated from the space of the city. Parkes and Thrift (1980) provided a seminal insight on this matter by advancing the concept of pacemakers. According to these authors, a series of establishments, such as offices, public services, or retail stores set the pace of urban time as they provoke movements during the hours in which they function. More recently, Kärrholm (2009) has demonstrated how the rhythms of public space are becoming increasingly synchronized with the rhythms of retail stores. On the other hand, Mulícek et al. (2014) have identified a series of pacemakers at different scales: public transports as local pacemakers; retail as a supralocal pacemaker; and the daily work-cycle as a citywide pacemaker. This perspective, however, may be overly structural and fail to account for both the relational and multiscalar character of urban dynamics and the uneven distribution of resources through the city’s spacetime.

On the other hand, what these studies do not consider is that it is not only premises and products that can function as temporal resources. Places themselves can function as temporal resources when they provide an environment that facilitates a certain temporality (Baron and Warnaby, 2011). As authors such as Shaw (2001) or Wunderlich (2013) have stated, certain places associated with nature and tranquility such as parks or gardens tend to be appropriated for slow practices, while more lively places such as city centers are preferred for fast practices. A place’s morphology, rhythm, smellscape, or soundscape are elements that can be seen as a resource for the performance of a certain practice (Edensor, 2010; Henshaw, 2014; LaBelle, 2010; Tuan, 1977).

In addition, these studies tend to focus on the movement created by these pacemakers, but seem to disregard their value in the everyday lives of individuals. On the other hand, studies on local facilities and amenities as resources for communities (e.g., Witten et al., 2003) tend to focus on their spatial distribution and accessibility and do not take into account how people put these resources into use in their everyday life. However, local resources are vital for the management of personal times in everyday life, as the studies of Fobker and Grotz (2006) and Paiva (forthcoming) show in the case of older populations.

Despite this, it is still important to consider that “not everyone’s time is of equal value” (Adam, 2004: 127). The ability to access temporal resources is not equally distributed and those who are financially wealthy also exercise greater control over time and therefore their pace of life, which makes processes of social marginalization a temporal issue besides being a spatial one (Adam, 2004; Schwanen and Kwan, 2012). Furthermore, the proliferation of differentiated consumption patterns associated with lifestyles (Paterson, 2006; Shields, 1992) has also generated distinct timestyles (Arnould, 2005) or time-practice profiles (Shove, 2009), meaning that individuals have distinct preferences regarding the allocation of their time throughout their daily life activities.

In the next section, we will describe the methodology undertaken in our study, and then proceed to presenting our results.

Methodology

The objective of this study is to understand the dynamics of speeding up and slowing down in the everyday life of residents in a neighborhood placed on the outskirts of Lisbon and the role played by local temporal resources in the performance of everyday life practices. We have chosen a suburban district because, in the age of city regions (Neuman and Hull, 2013; Parr, 2005), suburban spaces are often the main residential areas.

Our study was conducted in Colinas do Cruzeiro, a real estate project located in the Odivelas municipality in the periphery of Lisbon. The approval of the real estate project dates back from 2001 and the first buildings were concluded and inhabited in 2004. Since then, 172 high-density buildings of identical architecture have been constructed, which corresponds to 3660 apartments.

The architecture of buildings and public space is similar in the whole neighborhood and it differentiates the estate from the surroundings neighborhoods due to the higher quality of the building construction. The public space is pedestrian friendly, with large sidewalks, children’s playgrounds, and other amenities such as public benches or small green spaces. Data from 2011 shows that there was an occupation rate of 88%, by 3053 families making up a total of 7593 individuals, which corresponds to the projections on the number of families (3000) but not of individuals (12,000) (Cachinho, 2014). This can be explained by the neighborhood’s position in its life cycle. Currently, there is a clear predominance of families comprising one or two individuals (53% of the families) and families with children of less than six years old (37%). In other words, there is a predominance of double income no kids yet (DINKY) and double income with kids (DIWK) household types (Cachinho, 2014).

The available statistical data² also allows us to perceive some cultural aspects regarding the population. Education rates are high (40% of the population has higher education) especially when compared with the metropolitan area where it is inserted (18%). Also, there is great mobility within its population as 76% of the individuals work or study outside the municipality of Odivelas. The localization of Colinas do Cruzeiro (Figure 1) enables the high mobility of its inhabitants as it is located in close proximity to an important highway that links the city of Lisbon to its suburbs.

Figure 1.

Location of Colinas do Cruzeiro. Source: Authors.

An important aspect leading to the choice of Colinas do Cruzeiro is the abundance of retail shops and services (Figure 2). There were 202 open stores covering various branches of activity in 2011 and 220 in 2013. We should consider the fact that some buildings were constructed in this period, which partially explains the increase. Nevertheless, the life of the local shops is very precarious as only 148 outlets out of 2011 remained the same in 2013. Besides the local retail, there are also several important shopping areas within 10 to 15 minute proximity, including hypermarkets, one outlet shopping center, and four regional shopping centers. There are also some public facilities in Colinas do Cruzeiro, namely a middle school and the municipality sports hall. A deactivated football stadium is also located in the neighborhood. As a residential space, which is also rich in retail, services, and other public space amenities, Colinas do Cruzeiro provides a paradigmatic case for the study of temporal resources in everyday life.

Figure 2.

Rua Pulido Valente, Colinas do Cruzeiro, Odivelas, Portugal. 2014. Source: Authors.

In order to achieve this study’s objectives, we conducted 21 narrative interviews with the residents of Colinas do Cruzeiro (11 female and 10 male respondents, ages ranging from 23 to 63 years old). It has been thoroughly argued that narrative interviews allow us to come closer to the temporalities and spatialities in the everyday life of individuals, and their personal meanings and interpretations (Baars, 1997; Baynham, 2011; Tuan, 1991; van Leeuwen, 2008). The interview script was divided into three separate parts. First, the interviewee was asked to describe his or her life story. This enabled us to acquire an understanding of the reasons that led the interviewee to live in Colinas do Cruzeiro. Afterward, the interviewee was asked to describe his or her daily routines. This allowed us to apprehend the times and spaces of daily activities as well as their pace. In the third part, the interviewee was asked to describe the neighborhood and its role in his or her daily life, which allowed us to analyze the role of local resources as temporal resources. At the end of each part, the researcher would add a few questions to clarify or elaborate upon some aspects. The data that we discuss in this article stem from the second and third part of the interview.

Although this article focuses on an analysis of the interviews, the information was also cross checked against information gathered in the neighborhood during a yearlong period of directly observing the rhythms of the neighborhood’s public space, and through 17 interviews with local stakeholders, which included 15 shop keepers and 2 local associations.

Through the narrative interviews, it was possible to identify a series of timestyles among the residents of Colinas do Cruzeiro by making a discourse analysis of their descriptions of daily routines, using a range of variables proposed by van Leeuwen (2008), namely time scheduling, modes of synchronization, and timing. Time scheduling refers to how one allocates activities throughout daily life (van Leeuwen, 2008). Modes of synchronization refer to how individuals synchronize their times with that of others. Personal times can be synchronized in three ways: (i) socially, when personal times are synchronized with the schedules of others; (ii) mechanically, when personal times are punctuated by clock time; and (iii) naturally, when personal times are synchronized with the natural circadian cycle of night and day (van Leeuwen, 2008). Timing refers to how one relates to time in everyday life activities, i.e. if activities occur in an exact or an inexact time frame and if they are unique or recurrent (van Leeuwen, 2008). In a second phase, we examined the relation between fast and slow practices and local temporal resources, taking into account the information from the narrative interviews with residents, which were compared with those of local stakeholders and the direct observation of the rhythms of the neighborhood’s public space. We will present these findings in the next sections, followed by a discussion of the study’s implications.

Timestyles in Colinas do Cruzeiro

We identified four timestyles among the residents of Colinas do Cruzeiro. The variations between them are in terms of scheduling daily activities and their stance on time. In the next sections, each timestyle will be described. Figure 3 illustrates the scheduling and the different spatiotemporal patterns of each of the following timestyles.

Figure 3.

The schedules of the timestyles. Source: Author.

Runners

The runners profile is composed of parents with children, most of whom are under 15 years of age. They work full time and need to manage work and family time. They are married or divorced and their age ranges between 30 and 45 years old. Their work schedule starts between 8 and 10 a.m. and ends between 5 and 7 p.m., which corresponds to a nine to five model. After working hours, they are taken up with family care and domestic work. They generally work from Monday to Friday. The work schedule structures the temporal organization of the day, although some individuals have the power to adjust their working hours to their necessities. Nevertheless, their activity timings are generally exact and recurring. These are individuals who regularly feel rushed, due to the conciliation of work and family or the pressure they feel at work.

Routiners

The Routiners are full-time workers who are not yet or are no longer in the rush hour of life. They are single or unmarried couples between 22 and 30 years old or married between 50 and 65 years old. The fact that they either do not have children or their descendents are over 18 years old and autonomous gives them more time available for social and leisure activities after work. They have the temporal organization of their daily life in common, with a work schedule also close to that of nine to five. Owing to much less time pressure, these individuals change from exact and recurring timings in their commuting and working periods to inexact and unique timings in their leisure hours.

Flexibles

The flexibles profile is composed of individuals between 30 and 45 years old with flexible working schedules. That is, they may work in shifts, in temporary jobs, or work in business projects. Due to this, their everyday life does not have a fixed temporal organization. The personal life of these individuals varies, although there is a clear tendency to consider work and their professional career as a top priority. They live alone or as an unmarried couple, but without children. The timings of their activities are often inexact although not recurring. Because they are constantly available to pursue their work, they have difficulties in leading a regular social life or accessing local retail because they are unable to synchronize their schedules. In some cases, work overlaps physiological necessities such as sleeping or eating. Yet, they do not feel a strong time pressure and when they do, it is generally at work.

Caretakers

The caretakers are individuals who dedicate their time to family care and domestic work. This group merges two sub-profiles: (i) married women with children, between 30 and 45 years old, who have chosen to dedicate themselves to the family and not have a paid job; (ii) retired workers who dedicate their time to helping their descendents who also live in Colinas do Cruzeiro. As they do not have a work schedule, their time is constantly available to attend to the family and as such it is synchronized with their needs. They spend most of their time in Colinas do Cruzeiro, but not always at home. Although the timing of their activities tends to be inexact and recurring, all of these individuals have stated that they do feel time pressure in some moments, because tasks accumulate in short periods of time.

Speeding up and slowing down in Colinas do Cruzeiro

The need for speeding up and slowing down throughout the day and during the days of the week is common to all timestyles identified in Colinas do Cruzeiro, although to different degrees. Here, we will discuss the moments of speeding up and slowing down in the everyday life of the residents in Colinas do Cruzeiro, and the operand resources that are mobilized by these practices.

Speeding up and its resources

Commuting is often a moment of acceleration. It is a rushed period especially for runners and routiners, who must leave for work between 7 and 9 a.m. and return home between 5 and 7 p.m. In the morning, a series of personal activities in the home must be dealt with quickly. After leaving the house, the need to tackle traffic and public transport is also stressful, as one of the respondents explains:

I’m always more rushed during the morning. It’s that thing of getting up, hurrying up, leaving the house, looking at the clock; I must leave by a quarter past 7, ten past 7 and then catch the subway; after, I still have to take another bus and then it’s thinking about managing everything until I get there. (Sofia, female, 37 years old)

Commuting in the afternoon is also a moment of acceleration. While in this period, there are no personal activities to perform, there are often other errands to run, such as going to grocery shopping. For flexibles and caretakers, periods of commuting or longer time-space movements tend to be less stressful, possibly because they do these activities outside the rush hour. During periods of commuting, Colinas do Cruzeiro’s accessibility becomes a vital resource. In fact, this is one of the most cherished resources that the neighborhood has to offer, because it enables fast mobility:

The neighborhood is central and very accessible, no matter where you are or the activities you need to do. From here I have access to the CRIL and IC17.³ To pick up Pedro at the airport I only take five minutes, and five minute tops to get to the airport. I think the accessibility of the neighborhood is very good. (…) there are a lot of people who usually say «oh, Odivelas, is so far away from…», and I tell them «it’s closer than you think». Because everybody says «oh, going to Odivelas is so…» and then when they get here they say «hey, actually, it’s easier to come here than go to…». (Irene, female, 33 years old)

However, Colinas do Cruzeiro’s accessibility was planned for car users and some interviewees complained about the deficient public transport service. The lack of public transport is particularly felt by the older people or women of households with only one car that is used by their male partners (husbands) in their daily journeys to work.

Another driver of moments of acceleration is family care. This is more common among caretakers who not only have to arrange things for more than one family member but must also coordinate their own time with the needs of others. The difficulty in coping with the schedules of others becomes apparent through the words of Isabel, a 60-year-old retired woman:

My granddaughter changed schools; she has moved to the neighborhood school. So, the timetable is terrible; there are days in which I have to go there two or three times. I have to go and come and go again, because she has two or three free hours in between classes and afterwards she goes back again, and I end up with almost no time for myself. I mean, because afterwards it’s just really doing the food, the house. I’d like to do more things.

It is noteworthy that family care becomes even more of a driver of acceleration when it has to be reconciled with paid working time, which affects runners. This happens because not only does the total amount of time spent on necessary activities increase, but also many of these activities have to be accomplished in near simultaneous time periods. This generates a feeling of urgency to «get things done» quickly, as the words of Patrícia, a 37-year-old female, show:

It is stressful when I leave work and I begin to see the hours going by and «now I have to go and pick up Tiago, I won’t have time, he is going to be late». And so it’s that little bit of time… And maybe at the end of dinner because they [need to] go to bed as early as possible so as to sleep and sometimes it is not easy because they take too long to eat dinner or they begin wasting time.

For caretakers and runners, Colinas do Cruzeiro provides two sets of important resources that assist them in their daily tasks. On the one hand, a middle school and a series of family-oriented services such as day-care centers or children’s leisure-time centers are present in the neighborhood, which allow parents and grandparents to better coordinate their time with the children’s free time. On the other hand, the marked presence of many convenience shops such as grocery stores, supermarkets, or pharmacies allow individuals to save time by using local resources and avoiding longer trips. These facilities often have extended opening hours, remaining open until 8 or 9 p.m., allowing more residents to use their goods and services.

Slowing down

Dinner time tends to be a prime moment for deceleration for people living in the neighborhood, mainly for runners and caretakers. Vítor, a 53-year-old male, explains why dinner time is significant:

Well, one [of the special moments] is dinner. It’s dinner because it is the period of the day when sometimes we can all be together at home. During the day, my children are at college, they have schedules that are difficult for them to be together, and my wife is also at work. At the end of the day, during dinner time, we are able to be together, but not always, this is why this moment of the day is so special for me and my family.

This is the moment when family members are able to be together in the same space at the same time; therefore, it is an important moment for synchronization among individuals who have different daily paths. It is especially noticeable that many interviewees say that this is the one moment during the day that no one is on the go and the whole family is «sitting down». Sitting down together allows for conversations to occur about each of the family members’ day and creates time for enjoying the presence of others.

On the other hand, for some people, mainly for runners and flexibles, the only true moment of slowing down comes after dinner:

Afterwards, it is during the night when I’m more relaxed. . It’s when my children are asleep and (…) it’s when I’m like, at peace. Like, zen. (Sofia, female, 36 years old)

Slowing down time usually comes only after 9 pm. When my sons go to sleep, then I get more relaxed. This is the moment to watch TV, read a book … (Francisco, male, 34 years old)

As these quotes illustrate, the necessary care work during dinner for those who have children may prevent individuals from truly relaxing. On the other hand, other individuals also express the time when they can sit on the couch or lie in bed and be perfectly still as the moment in which they can actually relax. This, of course, is more common among individuals who have particularly stressful working days, especially runners and flexibles.

In all of these cases, the domestic space emerges as the place of slowness. Home is where one can rest, enjoy the company of loved ones, and devote free time to soothing activities such as watching television or reading. During week days, it is the transition from the public space into private space, which also corresponds to a transition between fastness and slowness.

For most of the interviewees, the weekend is seen as a different time. Although many do their shopping in this period, it is mainly the time without the pressures of paid work and care work and it is occupied with leisure activities with family or friends:

(…) also because during the week we don’t have much time left because of our granddaughter. We don’t have time to … But during the weekend sometimes there is time. We come here or we go to the countryside (Nazaré) or somewhere, we go and blow off steam sometimes … (Jorge, male, 63 years old)

As Jorge’s words convey, the weekend is important because it is when one has free time and can use it to slow down. And in nearly all cases, one wants to use that time more slowly. Among runners and caretakers, due to time being spent with their children who need to play and exercise, it is common to be in the public space. These are the people who value the neighborhood the most and see it as a place to enjoy and spend time in. The morphology of Colinas do Cruzeiro is recurrently underlined because of its scenic value and the comfort it provides due to the existence of wide sidewalks and small greens spaces with trees. On the other hand, there are a set of spaces and materialities, namely children’s playgrounds, small plazas, and public benches, which are used for spending time playing and walking in and for chatting (talking). Usually, these individuals spend large amounts of time during the morning or the afternoon in the public space. However, some of them also complain about the lack of larger green spaces in the neighborhood and as a result, they often travel to other sites in the metropolitan area where large gardens or public parks are located.

Among routiners and flexibles, there is a preference for spending time in coffee shops and restaurants, therefore combining pleasant consumption practices of eating and drinking and socializing. The many facilities that the neighborhood offers are used, but some people also prefer going to Lisbon. Some facilities are also patronized during the night, mainly by routiners, who use the bars and coffee shops or public spaces for dog walking and socializing, especially when the weather allows it, as on summer nights. For flexibles, the weekend is also important because it is when they are able to synchronize their own times with the times of their friends and family. However, the different facilities offered by Colinas do Cruzeiro seem to be less important for these individuals. While references to activities carried out in the public space are greatly reduced, coffee shops and neighborhood shops are only attended once in a while to meet momentary needs.

Discussion

Our study sought to understand the dynamics of speeding up and slowing down in the everyday life of people living in a suburban neighborhood of Lisbon and the role played by local resources in the performance of everyday life practices. In studying the data we collected, it became clear that fast and slow times were not distributed equally throughout the residents of the Colinas do Cruzeiro neighborhood, due to differences in schedules, synchronization modes, and timing. We identified four distinct profiles of timestyles in the district. Each of these timestyles expresses mainly the qualities of one of the temporalities identified by Urry (2009). Runners and routiners both express mainly clock time, in the sense that their time is deeply structured by rigid timetables. However, due to the conciliation of work and family needs, runners are also a paradigmatic example of the acceleration of the rhythms in everyday life that Rosa (2013) identifies. Routiners, on the other hand, are able to switch between faster moments related to work and commuting and slower moments during their free time. The characteristics of instantaneous time (Urry, 2009) are best reflected in the everyday life of flexibles. The unstructured schedules that these individuals live by and their near instant availability to their jobs are an example of the consequences of detemporalization of time that Leccardi (2007) speaks about. Lastly, caretakers seem to be those who are closer to what Urry (2009) terms as glacial time. However, while it is true that these individuals’ practices tend to slow down due to the need for caring for and playing with children, the practices associated with family care are also often a motor of acceleration, as also occurs with runners. It does seem, then, that the association between family and slowness, which is so often present in social analysis (Mellor, 1999; Shaw, 2001; Urry, 2009), is not a useful one. In terms of speed, family time is often ambiguous, forcing both acceleration and deceleration in specific moments.

This also brings us to another issue related with the interaction between fastness and slowness. Eriksen (2001) argued that fast time tends to overcome slow time, i.e., there is a tendency for slow processes to also accelerate, while the opposite does not tend to occur. In our results, it is clear that the need for speeding up is imperious in the everyday lives of Colinas do Cruzeiro’s dwellers, but the desire to enjoy time and appreciate places always subsists, which calls for slowed down moments. This tension between fast and slow is common to all. While there is a tendency toward speeding up, even those more adapted to a fast rhythm or polychronicity feel the need to slow down, to escape, to have fun, or to contemplate. For this reason, fast time can never terminate slow time, as each individual always seeks moments to «stop time», hence the persistence of the weekend as «another time» and the desire to have green and open spaces within the city.

The results of our study also allow us to understand how both accelerated and decelerated practices are deeply grounded in urban space. Individual or collective practices of acceleration or deceleration are dependent upon a set of local resources, which assist individuals to engage with time as they wish. We have followed Latour’s (2005) arguments for a relational perspective on human agency, and therefore we have read local temporal resources in a broad way, including all the elements that are mobilized toward the performance of a practice’s temporality. We have interpreted this as an interplay between the individual’s operant resources, which mobilize the operand resources that the neighborhood provides in order to accomplish a practice (Arnould, 2005; Vargo and Lusch, 2004). Our findings show how practices of speeding up and slowing down mobilize different sets of resources available in Colinas do Cruzeiro, contributing to the understanding that different temporal resources set different paces by assisting acceleration or deceleration, an aspect that had not been sufficiently addressed by former studies on pacemaking (such as Kärrholm, 2009 or Mulícek et al., 2014) or community resources (Witten et al., 2003). On the other hand, our findings present a complex image of how temporal resources can operate at various scales, instead of specific resources acting in specific scales as argued by Mulícek et al. (2014).

Analyzing local resources from the viewpoint of their temporalities also shows that the value of these resources cannot be properly assessed separately. Each of the temporal resources we have identified is deployed for a specific practice in a given time period of the resident’s everyday life. They complement each other in the resident’s entire everyday life. On the other hand, these resources are also complementary in given practices. For instance, when individuals resort to coffee shops and restaurants for slower practices of consumption and sociality, they also enjoy the scenic value of the public space of Colinas do Cruzeiro. We would argue, then, that local resources must be evaluated in relation to the context they are part of and how they are mobilized in that context, along the line of McFarlane’s (2011a, 2011b) argument that urban contexts are ongoing assemblages of different elements. This would be helpful, for instance, for undertaking the difficult task of understanding how local businesses can become viable in specific contexts (Grant and Perrot, 2011; Weterings, 2014).

We must also consider that not everyone’s time matches the availability of resources. Flexibles, for instance, often cannot access retail and services in the neighborhood because the majority of them are already closed when these individuals arrive home after work. On the other hand, some individuals lack operant resources, such as a car, to mobilize the operand resources that the neighborhood provides, such as accessibility. For these reasons, it is important to read not only the temporal resources that the city provides but also the ability of dwellers to activate them (Arnould, 2005). When a temporal resource becomes properly activated for a practice, it becomes a temporal advantage.

Our broad view of temporal resources shows an interesting intertwining of different elements that people resort to as temporal advantages in the performance of their everyday life practices. This leads us to reflect on the need for a more integrated and relational stance on urban management and planning, an aspect that has been recently defended and explored (Khan et al., 2014; Metzger, 2014), given the different institutional levels through which temporal resources are spread, e.g. retail and services facilities subject to the free market; public space managed by the municipality; public facilities and roads planned by the state. In this regard, the soft neoliberal forms of governance and management (Haughton et al., 2013) may be interesting to explore, provided they become more inclusive with respect to the different actors playing a role in the decision-making process. Our study shows that through understanding the everyday lives of local populations, we can learn a great deal about the utility of the resources of urban space, and so we must include them in the processes of urban management and planning. Urban time policies have tried to confront these issues in the last decades (see Henckel et al., 2013; Mückenberger, 2011), but in countries like Portugal, there is still a great lack of such approaches.

Conclusion

The Colinas do Cruzeiro neighborhood can be seen as a center of resources, which are mobilized toward the performance of fast and slow timestyles and practices. In this sense, Colinas do Cruzeiro is a temporally mutable space. Throughout the day and the week, people with different paces appropriate different spaces in the neighborhood, changing the rhythms and the locus of activity. We observe a mutual influence between humans and space(s): the rhythms of the neighborhood are subject to the temporalities of social activities, but these are supported and spatially arranged through the existence of resources in the neighborhood.

An interesting line of work that this article points to is that of understanding how urban time policies can work to promote different rhythms throughout the city, instead of an overall speeding up or an overall slowing down. If the conflict between fastness and slowness is clearly a central issue in the everyday life of urban dwellers, then it also calls for a more attentive engagement of both scholars and planners.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This study is part of the research project CHRONOTOPE: Time-space Planning for Resilient Cities: New Means of Sustainable Planning of Societies of Consumption (URBAN/0002/2009). This project is part of the European research network Urban-Net and funded by the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT). Disciplines: Geography, Urban Studies.

Notes

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