This article discusses the enactment of conflicting time regimes in contemporary urban retail and consumer services. We draw on the theories of time–space compression, social acceleration, and the fast–slow dichotomy to argue that retail and consumer services act on urban life by enacting two apparently conflicting time regimes: fast time and slow time. Although retail and consumer services are not able to establish urban time regimes by themselves, they enact time regimes in their stores by offering the temporal resources that consumers need to perform their preferred timestyles. These temporal resources stem from the store’s concepts, sales model and management strategies, and ambiances. We draw on our ongoing field research in Colinas do Cruzeiro, an upper middle-class suburban neighborhood in greater Lisbon, Portugal, which has included field surveys, nonparticipant observation, and semistructured interviews. Our findings identify three time regimes that retail and consumer services in Colinas do Cruzeiro enact in their stores. This finding allows us to understand the processes through which retail, consumer services, and urban rhythms tend to synchronize. We discuss the geographical implications of understanding the processes that underpin the enactment of time regimes in contemporary urban retail and consumer services.

本文讨论了当代城市零售和消费者服务中相互冲突的时间制度的制定。我们利用时空压缩理论、社会加速理论和快慢二分法来论证零售和消费者服务通过制定两个明显冲突的时间制度来影响城市生活：快时间和慢时间。尽管零售和消费者服务无法自行建立城市时间制度，但它们通过提供消费者执行其首选时间风格所需的时间资源，在其商店中制定时间制度。这些时间资源源于商店的概念、销售模式和管理策略以及氛围。我们利用我们在科利纳斯杜克鲁塞罗正在进行的实地研究，科利纳斯杜克鲁塞罗是葡萄牙大里斯本的一个中上阶层郊区社区，其中包括实地调查、非参与式观察和半结构化访谈。我们的研究结果确定了科林纳斯杜克鲁塞罗的零售和消费者服务在其商店中制定的三种时间制度。这一发现使我们能够了解零售、消费者服务和城市节奏趋于同步的过程。我们讨论了理解当代城市零售和消费者服务中时间制度制定过程的地理意义。