Temporal regimes in heritage and urban planning: Conceptualising the ordering of past, present and future

This article develops the notion of temporal regimes to analyse how time is ordered, valued and linked in the intertwined fields of heritage and urban planning. Heritage studies have long emphasised that ‘the past’ is actively constructed in the present, while planning theory has highlighted the future-oriented nature of planning. Yet the temporal logics that structure these practices are often treated implicitly. Drawing on sociological and historical work on social time and modern temporality, as well as critical heritage studies and planning theory, the article proposes temporal regimes as a mid-level concept for capturing patterned ways of relating past, present and future in policy and governance. The article outlines three ideal-typical temporal regimes that recur in heritage-related urban development. In a continuity regime, the past appears as a stabilising foundation for identity and place, and planning is tasked with carrying valued inheritances forward with minimal rupture. In a modernisation regime, the future is framed as qualitative improvement over a problematic past, and existing environments are treated as obstacles or raw material for redevelopment. In a sustainability/resilience regime, both past and future are organised around notions of risk, vulnerability and long-term robustness, and heritage becomes part of a broader resource base for adaptation. For each regime, the article sketches characteristic linguistic, visual and institutional expressions, and shows how they can coexist and conflict in practice. Temporal regimes thus make explicit the temporal assumptions embedded in heritage and planning and offer a conceptual bridge between empirical analyses of urban development and wider debates on the organisation of time and historicity in late modern societies.