Experiential economies and the performativity of urban Activation

In April 2010, the retail magazine Shopping Centre published a series of articles on ‘more creative ways of filling vacant space’ to counter the impact of the recession on shopping malls’ occupancy in the UK. A ‘best practice’ example was the case of the Elephant and Castle Shopping Centre in south east London, where the management had encouraged art and community events within vacant units. As explained by the manager, ‘the last thing anyone wants is a barren unit. Posters are good, but what you really want is people milling around inside’. In crude but unambiguous terms, his response sums up a key experiential dimension of temporary urbanism: its performance of vibrancy and ´space activation´, intervening in perceptions of vacancy and abandonment. Beyond a merely visual transformation of the space, artistic community-oriented programming is a highly prized filler for its ability to generate social activity. In the case of the Elephant and Castle Shopping Centre, they enabled the traders—in the manager's words—to ‘capitalise on [the] sense of community and interaction’. The performance of the urban activation of vacant spaces through the staging of urban sociability is a central component of the pop-up urban imaginary. On a first reading, the verb ‘staging’ can be interpreted in an instrumental way to indicate practices of ‘immersive’ marketing developed in relation to the idea of ‘experience economy’.