Transformative power of city play: social media and place in a post-affordance world

Figures & data

Figures 9–12. Skating in a massive DIY skate park, climbing in an abandoned industrial site, graffiti, and a skate-park built inside an abandoned church demonstrate the transformative nature of ‘city play’. Screen captures of adolescent ‘no place for play’ categories were collected from online sources.

Table 1. Videos and scenes by age and category.

	n	m	Kappa
Search terms combinations	476
Play related videos	998
Adult focused videos	372	37%
Adolescent focused videos	514	50%
Children focused videos	102	10%
Selected and coded scenes	6,686
Play in place	1,357	20%	K > .8
Space for play	1,280	19%	K > .84
No place to play	2,941	44%	K > .6

Table 2. Matrix used to identify divergent categories of city play.

	A. Normative behavior	B. Alternative behavior
A. Formal place/space	A/A: Places to play	B/A: Space for Play
B. Informal space/place	B/A: Play on space	B/: No Place to Play

Table 3. Search terms used for city play.

Category	Place/Space	Activity
Play in place	Playground	Playground, school playground, playground fence
	School yards	Schoolyard, school playground, school activities, play in school, school with no rules
	Parks	Park, parkour, skateboarding, sk8, pushing, skating, picnic, crowd park, art in park, dog park, walking in park
	Plaza	Plaza seat, small urban spaces, plaza observation, plaza skateboard, plaza flash mob, plaza parkour, plaza cosplay
	Open space	Seaside, beach, mountain hiking, play mountain, sand boarding, paddle boarding, kayaking paddle, cliff climbing, squirrel suit, extreme sport, mountain tai sunrise, dunhuang desert, rolling down hill, longboarding
Space for play	Parades	Dog parade, Halloween parade, band parade, pride parade, Chinese parade, Christmas parade, New Year parade, VEISHEA parade, skateboarding parade, parkour parade, Independence Day parade, St. Patrick Day parade, dance parade, kids parade, fun parade, boat parade
	Festivals	Burning man, music festival, food festival, Christmas celebration, new year, Halloween, independence day celebration, Easter, summer festival, water festival
	Flash mobs/Dance/Fun runs	Flash mob, flash mob proposal, fun run, zombie run, mud run, color run, electric run
No place to play	Art & installs	Street art, art wall, water graffiti, moss graffiti, rubber duck, Florentijin Hofman, urban installation, small horse Poland street, big red ball project, music stairs, fun theory
	Street art	DIY park, skateboarding street, play in street, parkour, graffiti, abandoned places
	Transitional spaces	Unicycles, critical mass, naked bicycling, bar crawls, zombie run, pokemon go, mobile phone sidewalk, go-skate day, parkour, biking (to school), paddle, boat, skateboard traffic
	DIY parks	DIY park, DIY skateboard park, DIY snow park, DIY water park, DIY dog/animal park, guerrilla garden, community gardens
	DIY cities	Better blocks, informal city, self-made city healthy street, hacking the city

Figures 1–4. Risky play takes practice and designated play places provide an instrumental value, permitting repetition. Screen captures of Adolescent ‘Play in Place’ categories collected from online sources. Note for figures: all videos were sourced from public domains YouTube.com or Vimeo.com. Institutional human subjects review stipulated data would be deidentified and no identifying information of individual identities, including author pseudonyms, would be published as a result of this research.

Figures 5–8. Flash mobs, break-dancing, a mobile piano, and countless phones recording a fun run demonstrate how crowds and performance creates an intrinsic value to space. Screen captures of adolescent ‘space for play’ categories were collected from online sources.