Kinaesthetic cities: Studying the worlds of amateur sports and fitness in contemporary urban environments

Abstract

Developing the concept of kinaesthetics, this article undertakes a critical re-description of amateur sports and fitness to explore the topographies, materials, innovation, and socialities that make up urban environments. Extending work on affect and urban materiality within geography and elsewhere, we argue that amateur sport and fitness animates many cities in ways that are frequently overlooked. The paper aims to 1) broaden understandings of amateur sport and fitness practices; 2) reframe perspectives on the kinds of environments cities are; 3) develop a prospective politics of provision involving the design and maintenance of a social infrastructure of amateur sport and fitness.

Social infrastructure and the public life of cities: Studying urban sociality and public spaces

“…Turning away from social infrastructures that are either publicly or commercially provided, it is worth thinking about the social infrastructures that facilitate particular kinds of activities and practices. One important but easily overlooked set of practices are those of amateur sport and fitness (Hitchings and Latham, ; Latham & Layton, ). Parks and playing fields are perhaps the most obvious examples here—and attending closely to the activities that are going on in them reveals distinct kinds of social life.…”

Social geography II: Space and Sociality

“…As a metaphor, the term ‘social infrastructure’ (McFarlane and Silver, 2017: 463) has been used in writing by social geographers to frame how physical design, objects, services, programs, events and processes come together to constitute social life. Latham and Layton (2020) discuss how the social infrastructure of everyday sports and fitness practices – such as parks, schools and community spaces – emerge and evolve in cities to aid kinaesthetic practices that lead to health, wellbeing and connectedness, allowing individuals and communities to flourish. For Van Melik and Merry (2021), the library is conceptualised as a site of ‘infrastructuring’ wherein organising lunch meetings, cultural events and classes to stimulate encounters become ways of repurposing the library into a type of social infrastructure to enhance community wellbeing.…”

Geographies of running cultures and practices

“…Other contemporary running practices similarly aim to do more with running and to put the energy it expends to wider benefit. Examples include plogging where running is combined with litter picking, GoodGym where it is combined with various activities of public and community good (Tupper et al., 2020), charity events and challenges where running takes on philanthropic purposes (Palmer & Dwyer, 2020), art projects where running gains a new aesthetic dimension (Edensor & Lorimer, 2015) and movements that heighten the sociality and social life of running, such as running crews (Latham & Layton, 2020).…”