Session of the 50th Symposium of ICOHTEC at Tallinn and Tartu, Estonia
The session aims to compare different paths appropriating the built environment of cities in historical and transnational perspective. Such appropriations are more or less linked to leisure activities – having 19th century’s flaneurs or (mostly) 20th century’s tourists in mind as well as visitors of playgrounds, theaters, concert halls, cinemas, or sportive events. Sometimes these activities were supported by city planning. The recent development employing serious games as tools of participation bridges the gap between playing and shaping the built environment. The urban space motivated especially members of younger generations to meet for different activities such as playing music, dancing, or painting in the streets, switching gas lanterns on and off, or climbing and skating, enriched by urban surfaces. Freedom of life in cities enabled inhabitants conducting quite different technology-based activities. Some of them were clearly dangerous, some beyond what was tolerated by societies, others were just subversive games. Train-surfing has gained influence within the last decades as well as wild races by cars or motorbikes. The development of graffities gives an example illustrating how much the perception of such activities has changed within the last 50 years. Whereas it was regarded as ugly and disfiguring the city by many persons in the beginning, sprayers have got some support in the 1970s already, and graffities are exhibited in museums nowadays. In the long run, graffities shaped cities to an increasing degree.
- How are urban leisure activities influenced by the built environment? And vice versa: to which degree is the development of cities influenced by these activities?
- Are there typical periods of urban leisure’s role in shaping cities?
- Does a transnational approach open different levels of comparison?
Contributions to methodological questions are welcome as well as case studies. Please contact me or send in a proposal to stefan.poser@kit.edu until 28 February 2023.
Stefan Poser
President of ICOHTEC