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ABSTRACT
The following paper aims to contribute to an interdisciplinary field of enquiry addressing the ways in which lifestyle and informal sports can inform policy debate and development at various levels. It will do so by considering the ambivalent position that parkour is taking within policies of urban and community re-branding enacted in Turin, Italy. Parkour in Turin is an increasingly structured discipline often endorsed by events celebrating the city’s vibrancy, and by local projects that target youth, and promote social participation. However, this discipline implies also a spontaneous and irreverent engagement with urban spaces that often creates frictions and conflicts between traceurs (parkour practitioners) and other actors in relation to what constitutes the public, how it should be used and by whom. Drawing on 14 months of ethnographic research with a group of 20 traceurs predominantly of migrant origins, this study focuses on the participants’ ambivalent engagement with one project promoting social participation through sports in Turin’s urban spaces. Building on the ethnographic material, this paper addresses the emerging relationship between social projects, informal urban practices and emerging forms of creative urbanism. The discussion focuses on the ambiguities and fault lines of urban agendas incorporating lifestyle and informal sports in their (neoliberal) vocabulary of community and place regeneration. However, this paper calls also for the necessity to engage with spontaneous, informal physical practices as a way to acknowledge, and support existing, contested negotiations of citizenship and belonging in urban spaces.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. Interestingly, this ratio is not common amongst traceurs’ crews training in more structured courses in gyms and sporting associations in Turin.
2. Parkour Torino endorsed the ADAPT instructor qualification system created by the UK based ‘Parkour Generations’. As this qualification is the only acknowledged by parkour’s founders, it is thereby (re)presented as embodying the authentic version of the discipline (see Ferrero Camoletto et al. Citation2015, p. 314).
3. The creative city model has been described as aiming to cultivate glamorous innovation and cultural vibrancy, thereby creating a more attractive place for businesses and tourists, and thus stimulating further economic rewards (Mould Citation2015). Through a (neoliberal) logic indissolubly tying market revitalisation with the upscaling of urban residents’ quality of life, the creative city model has also been purported to encourage social inclusion, and responsibility, cultural participation and poverty alleviation (Semi Citation2004, Mould Citation2015).
4. Translations from texts in Italian were made by the author.
5. The implementation of new legislation from the regional government, such as Law 18/1999, favoured stimulating private companies to ‘enrich and valorise touristic areas’ with public funding (Bottero et al. Citation2012, p. 208), mainly by supporting the construction of tourist, or tourism-related structures.
6. According to CGIA’s study Turin’s enormous public debt is a direct consequence of the expenses the municipality sustained for the 2006 Winter Olympic Games (see also Vanolo Citation2015, p. 3).
7. Parkour is featured in the most recent promotional video produced by Turin’s Municipality Tourism Office http://www.torinoemotion.it/news051115/.
8. A ‘spot’ is a location traceurs choose to use for training.
9. Theatre and participatory video courses and workshops for ‘active job search’.
10. Though with notable exceptions (Thorpe and Ahmad Citation2015, Thorpe Citation2016).
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Nicola De Martini Ugolotti
Nicola De Martini Ugolotti is lecturer at Bournemouth University and member of the Associazione Frantz Fanon in Turin. Drawing on a multi- and inter-disciplinary background, and focusing on informal physical activities and leisure practices, Nicola’s research addresses the nexus linking bodies, spaces, and power in contemporary contexts of uneven urban (re)development and social exclusion. His work has been published in Leisure Studies and Patterns of Prejudice.