*“Fit Cities: Practices of Sport and Fitness in the Contemporary City”*

RGS ANNUAL CONFERENCE 2nd CALL FOR PAPERS

*“Fit Cities: Practices of Sport and Fitness in the Contemporary City”*

*Dr 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 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 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. 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
• Fitness, sport, and social exclusion
• Urban policy, sport and fitness.
• Obesogenic environments
• Public space and everyday practices of sport and fitness
• Urban sociality, community, and sport fitness
• Cultural geographies of 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
• Sport, fitness and the commodification of urban space

Please email abstracts to alan.latham@ucl.ac.uk by *January 17, 2008*