Citizen participation is a valuable resource in redefining and democratizing urban space. In urban
regeneration projects, it fosters engagement by the community and integration among different forms of city
urbanization, such as formal and informal areas, i.e. slums. Despite the potentialities of participatory processes,
usually the plurality of actors involved challenges in the development of projects. From this perspective, one of
the most critical issues is the articulation of their actions in terms of time. Actually, the difference in background,
role and motivation between the participating actors can result in temporal misfits that hinder the implementation
of actions. Thus, this paper explores the temporal dimension of community-based participatory design
projects. Through action research, undertaken in a Brazilian context, we found out three different types of
temporal misfits that can occur in this kind of project. Reflecting on them using concepts from project management
and participatory design theory, we identified four contextual time factors that have to be considered to
deal with timing challenges and to strengthen this practice

• The challenge of time in community-based participatory design