Reworlding: Urban Play as Method for Exploring Alternate Social Imaginaries

Abstract

Urban play is a way of being, a frame for the reimagination of the world, and an opening up of potential and possibility. Playable cities from around the world demonstrate that this approach to civic engagement can improve public spaces and infrastructure and connect people to their cities and each other. The city as playground may be explored through creative practice methodologies and practices that emerge from urban play described as “reworlding.” Drawing upon field research within the Poblenou superilla and in Melbourne in response to Indigenous ways of being, various urban play methodologies and practices are articulated. Connections are explored between Barcelona’s inventive approach to public space, First Peoples connection to place and the alternate social imaginaries that emerge. However, while these worlds are present, they are obscured by dominant patterns of urban design—urban play methods are explored to bring them to the surface, making them playable.