Flux in our multifarious built environment gives rise to antagonisms in our lived experience of the spatial and temporal. Permanent space becomes temporary, and temporary space becomes permanent, reflecting myriad relationships and conflicts. This chapter considers uneven development from the perspective of communities, localised action and national governance, explored through the concepts of liminality and temporality. Our chapter revisits grounding literature on places in time, through concepts such as heterotopia. We argue that critical temporalities bring new insights into these liminal, temporary uses by focusing on the evolving spaces of change in marginal neighbourhoods in the UK. We present two case studies that analyse community projects and food banks, spaces which represent what we call ‘transient spatialities’. In our contribution, we suggest how contemporary experiences of capitalism can be effectively understood through liminality, temporality and transience in our case studies, which reflect experiences of poverty and deprivation at the economic margins.