Gordon WALKER, Lancaster University, United Kingdom
Techniques and concepts of rhythmanalysis have been worked with in a variety of urban settings in relation to a range of practices and concerns, including those related to forms of mobility, leisure, consumption and labour. In the foundational rhythmanalytic writing of Lefebvre and Regulier, energy is positioned centre stage in defining what rhythm is, but little engagement has followed in subsequent scholarship. In this paper, I bring rhythmanalysis into engagement with energy, carbon and climate and their deep entanglements in urban processes. Drawing on a recently published monograph Walker 2021), I consider the beats and pulses that come together to constitute the spatio-temporal dynamics of urban life as a way of exploring how rhythmic disruptions and recalibrations are a necessary part of both de-energising and de-carbonising urban functioning. I outline how to think in rhythmic, spatio-temporal terms about the types of transformations embedded in local through to city-scale action, while paying attention to how rhythms can be suffused with power and reproduce patterns of inequality and exclusion. Acting on rhythms to strip carbon-heavy techno-energies out of urban life, includes modes of decelerating urban processes, reconnecting between social, environmental and biological rhythms, localised attunement of polyrhythmic relations and shared synchronization and sequencing of rhythms of activity and infrastructure.
Mots clés : energy|rhythmanalysis|space|time
A104492GW