Permanent lessons from temporary urban sites: Insights from interim collective uses in Biel, Switzerland

Temporary urban uses are more than just stopgaps – they can offer lasting insights for more liveable cities. The Terrain Gurzelen in Biel illustrates how self-organised spaces can provide retreat, foster social inclusion and encourage creative responses to the urban polycrisis.

by Samuel Agyekum

On the afternoon of May 7, 2025, I took a research trip to the multicultural city of Biel (Switzerland), with over 50,000 residents. The place of research interest is the “Interim Use Football Stadium, Gurzelen,” which sits at the centre of the Champagne neighbourhood. The city owns the land but has temporarily given it to the Terrain Gurzelen Association, which is using it for short-term community or creative purposes until a long-term plan is made. I kicked off my visit with a chat with users of the space. After speaking with a few people on site, I embarked on a reflexive walk. At a slightly higher elevation, I found a unique perspective of the field leading to the photo above – a biodiverse habitat serving people’s and nature’s needs in no hegemonic order. This photo resonates with me as it summons memories of a lasting quote from Peter Harnik’s book Urban Green: Innovative Parks for Resurgent Cities:

“While mankind cannot do much about the brutal winter of the Twin Cities, the rain of Seattle, or the blistering heat of Phoenix, people can create great park systems in those and other locations to help mitigate the drawbacks and embellish on the strengths.”

This statement served as the compass for my reflection walk, as it drew my attention to the fact that cities are ultimately products of human free will with the purpose of addressing their inhabitants’ desire for liveable environments.

The photo depicts a site of the LangSamer project. My reflection on the LangSamer is a proxy for the entire interim use of the Terrain Gurzelen. It is one of the many interim “Zwischennutzung” projects making up the dynamic space in the middle of a neighbourhood in Biel. LangSamer is not just a habitat mainly oriented towards producing local food; it has a unique goal of employing urban residents who find little room for meaningful and rewarding activities within current social structures, such as asylum seekers. Amid the multiculturalisation of cities, there is a growing relevance of these kinds of spaces, which are not the products of top-down plans, but of intelligent “self-organisation” among urban residents, constantly striving for consistency with evolving social, economic, and cultural needs.

The success of this project on site, based on positive impressions among residents and some city authorities, emphasises another critical group of actors in urban development – “people.” By constantly weaving the social, cultural, and economic needs of residents into the urban fabric through everyday practices, they send signals that cities must leave room for creative spaces: unfinished sites that represent the many possibilities.

In the speed of urban life, riddled with social and climate challenges, inhabitants need retreat spaces as a shield from competitive impulses (that fail to reward alternative forms of living). These sites of retreat are necessary if cities can birth creative solutions to their polycrisis, as the case of LangSamer and other projects in the Gurzelen shows. This is all the more valid owing to the increasing multicultural character of cities, with diverse needs and creative opportunities at the same time.

The project LangSamer – the German word meaning “Slower” – and the Terrain Gurzelen in general may draw our attention to a vital, yet not so recognisable, piece of the urban planning puzzle: a slower model that could harness the creative abilities of “people” to “create a great park system […] and help mitigate the drawbacks” of climate change.

What if these slow models could help steer us away from the tyranny of urgency and growth in cities, which often creates the imperative to plan everything in terms of economic expansion? Testing this escape route from this tyranny may well begin with the admission that thorough planning of urban (green) spaces—despite claims of technical expertise—is not a silver bullet. Rather, accommodating the collective intelligence of people might offer more holistic interventions.

Embracing this collective intelligence does not imply a call for autarkic governance by the collectives. On the contrary, the role of the (local) state in different life phases of such initiatives may be a necessary condition for their success.

These thoughts, among several others, are the focus of my ongoing PhD research, which explores great self-organisation systems among urbanites to create more people- and nature-oriented spaces in Swiss cities. Stay tuned for more!