FIT CITIES: BODIES, MOVEMENT, AND PRACTICES OF FITNESS AND SPORT IN THE CONTEMPORARY CITY

RGS ANNUAL CONFERENCE CALL FOR PAPERS

FIT CITIES: BODIES, MOVEMENT, AND PRACTICES OF FITNESS AND SPORT IN THE CONTEMPORARY
CITY

*Alan Latham, Department of Geography, University College London*

*Clare Herrick, Department of Geography, King’s College London*

This group of sessions aims to start new conversations on a topic at once highly prescient and, at
the same time, grossly neglected by geographers: the place of fitness and sport in the
contemporary city.

While the wider sphere touched upon by sport and fitness is courting attention by the human
sciences, sociologists, public health, policy makers and urban planners, opportunities remain for
geographical perspectives. In particular, as government attention in the UK and beyond turns to
ways of encouraging and building physical activity back into the contemporary city, there is scope
for exploration of the ways in which this might unfold and the wider conceptual territory upon
which such activities might tread. Beyond the state, a whole range of sport and fitness practices
(from mass charity fun runs, to urban orienteering and Nordic walking, to parkour and urban
freeriding) point to how urban spaces are being reinterpreted, reworked, and reanimated in all
sorts of surprising ways through the inventiveness of the individual and collective human body.
This paper session will therefore start to try and map out what a urban geography focusing on
issues around sport and fitness might entail, the theoretical and conceptual frameworks upon
which it might fruitfully draw and the empirical domains waiting to be explored.

This group of sessions aims to think about and draw the links between sport and fitness and the
(often problematic) nature of the contemporary city. In particular, it wishes to move away from
discussions of the issues surrounding professional sport and its infrastructure towards the far
more mundane, everyday participatory practices of staying fit.

The organisers invite short abstracts of 200 words relating to (but not limited to) the following
broad thematic areas:

· Geographies of mass sporting participation.

· Urban geography and the ‘fit’ city

· Urban policy, sport and fitness.

· Public space and everyday practices of sport and fitness

· Sociality, community, and sport fitness

· Cultural geographies of sport and fitness

· Sport and geographies of urban justice

· Historical approaches to sport and fitness

· Embodiment and sport

· Urban political ecology and sport/ fitness

· The political economy of urban sporting consumption

· Landscapes of sport and exercise

If you have any inquiries about the sessions please email Clare Herrick (clare.herrick@kcl.ac.uk), or
Alan Latham (alan.latham@ucl.ac.uk).

Please email abstracts to alan.latham@ucl.ac.uk by *January 18, 2008 *