Based on a comprehensive review of urban time theories from a multidisciplinary background, as well as recent theories and practical experiences related to temporal city planning both domestically and internationally, this paper introduces the concept and content of temporal city planning from the core perspectives of time geography and behavioral geography. It elucidates the theoretical foundations of temporal city planning, including its views on time, space, and humanity, and discusses the practical approaches and future prospects of temporal city planning. Temporal city planning adopts an integrated perspective of “time-space-people”, with spatiotemporal and behavioral planning as its core methodology. It discusses specific implementation paths from three angles: spatial planning, time planning, and the background of modern technology. It also emphasizes that planners should possess a corresponding awareness of time and innovate theoretical perspectives and practical approaches in urban planning.

In recent years, X-minute city has gradually risen worldwide as an important strategy to cope with environmental and social issues and to achieve the goal of sustainable urban development. This concept emphasizes the construction of X-minute walking- or cyclingaccessible neighbourhoods as the basic unit of urban residents’ daily life. X-minute city is a‘spatiotemporal proximity-based’ concept influenced by the proximity-based spatial planning theories and the trend of chrono-urbanism. This paper reviews the international planning practices of X-minute city, and summarizes the differences between different definitions in community scale and city scale, their connotation diversity in different perspectives such as physical form, society, transportation and health, and resilience, as well as the richness of planning methods and implementation measures in different dimensions, such as space, time and technology. This paper then points out challenges in relevant practices world-wide, and puts forward implications for the X-minute city planning practices in China, including: strengthening the transmission of the implementation of community and urban scale planning and building a multi-level spatiotemporal resource supply system; enriching the connotation of time dimension and promoting the dynamic matching of supply and demand; building the implementation mechanism of the whole planning process and carrying out the practice of multi-dimensional planning method.

The wave of digitization is reshaping urban residents’ perceptual experience of daily life, pushing contemporary society step into an accelerated social context. Although existing studies on temporal-spatial behavior have deeply analyzed spatial phenomena and laws, the logic and spatial response behind the time changes have yet to be explored. This paper analyzes the accelerated trend of urban time in the digital age from the perspective of planning, combining interdisciplinary theories such as time-space sociology, and focusing on the spatial response. It is found that the popular application of digital technology makes time digitally signalized, drives time to be instantaneous, disordered, and fragmented, expands the value of time as a medium, transaction, and institution, and temporality becomes a key element in combining and defining space. Facing the intrinsic change of time and spatial response to digitization, this paper proposes a living circle planning strategy adapted to the digital age, which requires a shift in planning values to promote time-oriented spatial planning and platform-mediated virtual space governance to adapt to the needs of modern urbanization and digital development, and to shape a more poetic habitat.

As urban lifestyles increasingly digitize, there emerge new changes and demands in individual mobility. Due to the emergence of real-time data, the configuration of urban facilities and services can respond to this demand. However, current research on the matching relationship between individuals and urban facilities primarily focuses on the spatial patterns presented by individual mobility and facility locations, while relatively neglecting the role of time in influencing residents’ access to resources. Therefore, this paper interprets the relationship between individual mobility and facility services from the perspective of individual mobility and proposes a theoretical framework for understanding the spatiotemporal coordination among urban facilities, concludes relevant methods including spatiotemporal accessibility and cosine similarity calculation that provided by present studies, and illustrates their applications in urban planning through two case studies. Focusing on the connection issues between mobility and facilities at multiple levels in spatiotemporal coordination, the analytical methods proposed in this theoretical framework can comprehensively reveal the relationship between urban dynamics and individual mobility, formulate and evaluate urban time planning policies, provide effective tools and support, and help extend spatial facility planning based on spatial accessibility to spatiotemporal scheduling planning covering the entire process of individual mobility.

Revealing the decision-making mechanism behind residents’ spatiotemporal activities, as well as predicting their choices within urban environments under various policy scenarios, play a crucial role in achieving the goal of people-oriented development, implementing time-based planning policies, and accelerating the development of smart cities in the digital age. In the context of temporal city planning, this paper clarifies the significance of choice modeling in spatio-temporal behavior research, proposes a theoretical framework of ‘Time–Space–Decision–Activity’, and summarizes the methodology of spatiotemporal activity-based choice modeling in terms of basic elements, conditional assumptions, and estimation algorithms. Taking Shanghai Lujiazui as a study case, we explore a practical path encompassing ‘data collection, model formulation, preference analysis, policy making, and behavior simulation’. Moreover, this paper concludes that temporal city planning should get a deeper understanding ofthe decision-making mechanism to coordinate the relationship between individual time and urban time, between spatial planning and temporal planning, and between adaptive planning and directive planning.

In recent years, Temporal City Planning as a new planning approach has received increasing attention, which attempts to address the failure of urban resource allocation through incorporating time elements (e.g. 15-minute walk times) . There is thus a clear need to explore a new planning paradigm that focuses on residents’ daily time use. The paper attempts to propose a new planning paradigm, namely urban daily time planning. It articulates the aims and components of this novel planning approach. It argues that urban daily time planning should aim to match individuals in the population with activities under constraints of organizations’timetables. In addition, urban daily time planning should be implemented to regulate timetables of enterprises, organizations, services and facilities in order to pursue equitable allocation of space-time resources and to enhance the efficiency of residents’ daily activities. The paper further specifies the methods for conducting urban daily time planning in terms of both data collection and analyses, as well as formulating planning strategies. Through presenting a comprehensive framework for urban daily time planning as such, the paper attempts to highlight the significance of daily time in urban planning, in order to promote high quality utilization of urban time resources.

The role of communities as the basic unit of urban innovation and development is gradually being strengthened, especially after integrating the time dimension into the community planning and construction system, which greatly changes the understanding of community functional structure, spatial organization, and governance operation models. In 2014, Shanghai was the first in China to propose the unit concept of “15-minute community life unit” based on the perspective of temporal and spatial behaviors, respecting the development and changes of the city, strengthening the comprehensive management of various temporal elements of the community, and actively responding to the changing trends and complex demands of community social structure under the background of urbanization and globalization. By analyzing the evolution characteristics and typical practices of Shanghai “15-minute community life unit” concept, three main time paths in Shanghai community planning exploration are proposed. First, by optimizing the spatiotemporal structure of the life circle as a whole, the temporal value of community space is systematically enhanced. Second, by accurately guiding the spatiotemporal matching of individual behavior. The third is to respond to the full-time demands of community life in multiple dimensions through more resilient spatiotemporal dynamic governance. In the context of humanistic value oriented regression, the organization and implementation evaluation of relevant strategies will provide reference and inspiration for the practical application of temporal city planning at the community level in various regions.

The temporality in traditional planning has been reflected by the timing or dynamics of planning implementation, with insufficient consideration given to the allocation of timebased resources and activities within the city. The discussion of “urban time policy” originated in European countries and its practices have provided inspiration for China to comprehensively examine the temporal problems of cities and to establish a temporal path of time-based planning in Spatial Planning. This paper firstly discusses the concepts of temporal-city and temporal-city-planning, and puts forward the methodology system including temporal value, temporality and temporal city planning application. Then, it proposes a temporal city planning practice framework for the formulation and implementation of spatial planning, and interprets the framework from nine aspects by combining relevant examples such as in Beijing. Finally, the opportunities, challenges and prospects of temporal city planning in spatial planning system are discussed in the context of the current emerging technologies, such as big data, future city and urban computing.