TEMPORAL CONCEPT OF IDENTITY: POTENTIAL OF A DYNAMIC NOTION OF IDENTITY

Abstract

In the current context of contemporary cities, the concept of place identity has broadened its coverage to various scales such as national, cities, towns, neighborhoods or even a piece of land. Identities of places have often been associated with the image or impression of a place’s physical setting which is fixed or resilient to change through the passage of time. However, the current urban fabric of contemporary cities is constantly open to changes and emergence of multiple temporalities as a result from the sharing and blurring of boundaries among activities and space usages due to the densification of these cities. Such major transformation of the urban fabric conflicts with the traditional notion of place identity, thus instilling an impression and mentality among people that places have lost their identities. Thus, the aim of this research paper is to investigate the possibilities of a more dynamic and temporal notion of place identities which exist in our constantly changing urban context.