Public leisure space and community-based action

Abstract

ABSTRACT This manuscript discusses the importance of thinking about the category ‘public space’ in the leisure studies field, identifying relations between the urbanisation process and the configuration of public leisure spaces in contemporary cities. In addition, this paper reveals how space practices produced from counter-projects can change the way social life is conditioned, by presenting the case of the implementation of Praça de Bolso do Ciclista of Curitiba/PR/Brazil (PBC), a small leisure space whose peculiar process of construction can offer some insights and inspire more participatory forms in relation to leisure spaces of cities. Urban public spaces stand out as places particularly significant in everyday life, because they enable the involvement and enjoyment of innumerable activities in people’s time/space of leisure, and also constitute spaces where the collective exercise of power over urbanisation processes becomes more possible.