ABSTRACT
This paper explores the processes and attendant discourses of the temporary mode of urban occupation known as ‘meanwhile use’: the legal, short-term occupation of vacant buildings until they are redeveloped or commercially tenanted. The paper concentrates on non-profit forms of meanwhile use and one scheme in particular: the now-defunct Australian non-profit scheme, Renew Newcastle, as seen through the perspectives of various stakeholders. An increasingly popular urban phenomenon in London, Europe, North America, and Australia, temporary urban occupation has discernible benefits and challenges stemming from the temporary according of a property for short-term uses for a minimal or sub-market rate occupation fee. Some see the temporary gifting of property to worthy occupants as a generosity by the property owner as well as participants, who support each other and promote their host city. Others see meanwhile use as a precarious form of accommodation. To explore both perspectives further, the paper turns to theories of generosity, caregiving and noncapitalism, particularly those of collaborating economic geographers Julie Gibson and Katherine Graham ([1996]2006), and philosopher Stephen Ross (2001). Framed as a form of noncapitalist generosity specific to the twenty-first-century city, meanwhile use may both augment and exceed the capitalist economy from which it stems.
