In the last few decades, the domain of urbanization witnessed various revelations by city space practitioners, where advocacy for social sustainability became the key discourse. Throughout the cities’ evolution and adaptation; the cities rather demanded a more plastic approach for change, reducing sociability. The ephemeral exhibits and pop-up environments (PUEs) (Bertino, 2019) were advanced urban tools that devised a vehicle to advocate initial recognition for the city’s evolution as an emerging need for new infrastructures, new land uses, and new space availability. Led by migration and demographic change the PUEs manifest as an intersection between new city space’s customs and their habits.

The research directs attention towards the use of more examinations led by temporary environments that scale for various social interactions and recognize newer interactions of the city dwellers. Moreover, the agencies of planning and spatial practitioners of the city space are themselves in a dilemma over whether to provide a healthy and socially sustainable city space by expanding the public space or by improvising the essential infrastructure. Cities that are widely congested are prone to lengthy bureaucratic and implementation procedures where the scope of upcoming developments can be tested by adaptation through PUEs. Thus, offering an opportunity to operationalize and mobilize imaginations of an expanded city space through temporal mechanisms and frameworks of pop-up environments, to facilitate both a healthy public space and short-term infrastructure.

The idea of temporary urban space which is guided by the recent studies in the domain of pop-up environments (PUEs) and the framework (Bertino, 2019); examined for certain select projects such as the ‘add on. 20 Höhenmeter, 2005, Vienna, Austria’, propelled for an inquiry in the urban context of Mumbai. The city has also witnessed the open space, particularly the parks or the plazas transforming into formal and informal spaces for select activities. The informal interventions set cues for the anticipated and changing nature of sociability in the city. The social phenomenon is more accentuated at the unplanned places (Shroff, 2015), where the manifestation is temporary and comes into effect at a particular time. The architecture is envisioned in the interstitial time of urban evolution and newer formulations imagined for the neighbourhood’s pent-up demand for social and short-term public infrastructure. The location of intervention in the dense city centre of Mumbai, where extensive studies on patterns of informal interventions and social engagement are conducted offers a greater scope for experiments and also creates wider acceptability for an inclusive society.

Keywords: Pop-up Environment(PUE), cityspace, public infrastructure, informal interventions, inclusivity.