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.