Sports without Facilities: The Use of Urban Spaces by Informal Sports

Abstract

People in urban environments have begun to reinterpret certain physical or recreational activities as sports, such as riding your bicycle to work, skate-boarding on the supermarket's parkinglot, or playing ball in open spaces between buildings. To engage in such informal sports activities, people temporarily take possession of empty lots or building space, areas which are primarily used for other activities. However, such primary use allows for other uses also, in this case sports activities. Instead of demanding outdoor sites or indoor spaces especially created or officially designated for sports, individuals temporarily redesignate such areas to become "informal sports facilities." For this reason, urban development planning and municipal sports policy should, in the future, conceptionalize and recognize such informal sports facilities as a new measure to parallel the traditional facilities created for athletic events. This presupposes, however, that the demand for spontaneous use, as characteristic of informal sports activities, is officially accepted and supported by municipalities and legislators. Sports in Urban AreasIn industrial societies, such as Germany or the United States, the world of sports is characterized by converse developmental trends. On the one hand, spectator sports are on the increasea few professional or top-level athletes competing in front of millions of spectators. This kind of sport continues to derive its maxim from the classical concept of the purpose of sport: faster, higher, farther. This maxim relates as much to the expected physical achievement of an athlete as it does to the remuneration to be gained from it. For a considerable segment of today's population, however, the purpose of engaging in sports follows opposite ends. Increasingly, everyday physical and recreational activities are being redefined as &dquo;sport&dquo;; everyone can engage in them, and spectators are not needed. Thus, riding your bicycle to work is considered a sportslike activity. The same redefinition process occurs when a group of senior citizens goes on a weekend hike, or when a group of youngsters engage in spontaneous games in open spaces between buildings, with rules often aligned to the requirements of the physical surroundings. While professional sports or top-level athletic activities make increasing demands for ever more highly specialized athletic facilities, such as indoor arenas for soccer or football stadiums, indoor courts for tennis or track and field events, rock climbing facilities, or golf-course driving ranges, everyday informal sports activities begin to invade and re-form urban spaces and facilities for shared use. As a result, such spaces are temporarily redefined as sports facilities: bike trails, yards, open spaces, empty lots, vacated factory buildings -all are utilized for informal or recreational sports activities.

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