The active city perspective: Body practices in the urban public space

The body-friendly urban landscape concept is deeply rooted in the parallel history of body and town-planning dating back at least to the 19th century when the hygienical problems drove toward massive rehabilitations in European cities. The last decades have witnessed a reaction, aimed at city sustainability, to people’s marginalization from the public space, result of a car-oriented planning. In this scenery, the body is gradually assuming a pivotal role as city liveability’s indicator. The matter of the body moving in the public space embraces several intertwined cultural dimensions questioning socio-educational, health, legislative, and infrastructural features. In this light, and systematized by the WHO, the active city (AC) approach is emerging as a prospective inter-sectorial strategy to deal with multifaceted urban issues through the facilitation of the body expression. Observed from the social sciences viewpoint, this tendency entails ambiguities: while the demand to enhance physical activity (PA) is encountering a growing attention, a social control of the body can be envisaged as potential risk. The arguing about opacities and the difficulties in the implementation of the policies to promote PA should be included in the AC planning process. The on-going study had been based on direct observations (n=45) of European cities (n=6) sites (n=25), and interviews (n=22). Recently, the study, both qualitative and quantitative, has been expanding to specific groups (children, elderly, and commuters) involving urban planning policies at different scales, also investigating the prospective role of ICT devices. Certain AC planning criteria are emerging: a revised classification of sport and PA infrastructures (IMPALA EU-funded project), their availability, proximity, and accessibility; an awareness of the concepts of tight and loose spaces (Franck & Stevens, 2006), space and place, adaptability and flexibility, porosity, ‘egoistic’ and ‘altruistic’ PA. These concepts highlight an enduring structure-agency relationship between the body and the city, while designing a body-geography (Bourdieu, 1992) of lively and sociable places endorsing a plurality of performances. Furthermore, a key role should be played by the involvement of citizens and by a wide sight on participation, which is the very central point connecting the involved disciplines, including bottom-up processes and informal appropriation of spaces. A scattered tendency to plan public spaces according to AC criteria is observable. The majority of planning starts from a sectorial approach; few of them show an awareness of the potential consequences on PA levels, rarely are based on an interdisciplinary and participatory model.