Slow City

The experience of time is relative and can only be perceived through changes in the physical world around us. Throughout history cities emerged as centres of increasing speed. Today, the relationship between people and the speed of the city has transitioned from a state of shock and fascination to a crisis of disassociation and numbness. Paradoxically, one cannot appreciate slowness without an awareness of speed. Slow city is proposed in this thesis, which emerges amid the speed of the city, creating breaks in the urban fabric. These breaks become moments of pause and reveal, where one can drift through alternative routes within the city, immersed in where one is rather than where one is going. Slow strategies are explored through material expression, paving, vegetation, water and seating to slow down one’s experience. By implementing moments of slowness, the thesis argues that cities become more engaging and livable.