Space/Time for Leisure: Some Notes towards a New Approach in Urban Planning

Abstract

It is not easy to discuss the problems of leisure in a European context as if it were a universal concept, a value uniformly distributed all over our continent. Here, as in every sector of social life, the need is emerging for an understanding of the specific rather than the general, a close-up view of the particular rather than wide-spectrum extrapolations. The increasing complexity of European society, its division into classes, categories, power groups and lobbies, is matched by growing geographical specialisation both in regional and urban terms, as each of the major cities increasingly tends to specialise: in management, finance, science and technology, manufacturing or tourism. Consequently it is interesting to try to identify the common factors in this diversity, factors related to long-term, global trends (car ownership, expansion of the service sector, greater spending power, etc.), particularly the range of problems related to the quality of the urban environment.