Production of Fit City: Physical (In)Activity, Body and Everyday Space in Delhi

Abstract

The article intends to map the emerging critical geography of physical activity, everyday spaces and the body in the context of recently installed open gyms in public parks of Delhi. By employing fit city as a heuristic device, the case study of open gyms is set against a dual backdrop of policy modes of thinking through which physical (in)activity has emerged as a ‘legitimate policy issue’ and the embeddedness of physical (in)activity at an individual level. This article brings these two views in juxtaposition to each other through the lens of governmentality by proposing three logics to the open gym—as a social infrastructure, as a social space and as a device for the body. It argues that the production of a fit city is rooted in the conceptions of a fit, productive, healthy and disciplined body driven by nationalistic imagination that is reproduced through initiatives such as open gyms.