Playin' the city
Edited by Judith Ackermann, Andreas Rauscher, Daniel Stein
(Navigationen 1/2016) Universität Siegen
ISSN 1619-1641, 179 pages
»Cities are a focal point in our narratives about history. [… W]e look at cities to see where history is taking us. [… I]t seems that the future of mankind is some- how connected to cities.« These three sentences, taken, in condensed form, from Miguel Sicart's essay »Play and the City« in this special issue of Navigationen, cap- ture the significance and urgency of our heightened interest in the development of cities. Indeed, studies of the history, current state, and potential futures of cities abound (and have done so for decades), occupying the center of some disciplines, such as urban studies,1 and constituting subfields of other disciplines, such as liter- ary and cultural studies,2 media studies,3 and history.4 What distinguishes the es- says and discussions assembled in this issue from the majority of research on the city, however, is a shared focus on play as a crucial urban element. As Sicart points out in his essay, »playful engagement with urban environments has been a constant mode of resistance and appropriation of cities for their citizens,« and it seems to us that this engagement deserves much deeper and broader analysis than it has been afforded to date. Thus, this special issue draws attention to the city as a playground: as a space that enables, and perhaps inherently calls for, playful and often creative encounters among inhabitants, visitors, and the urban environment itself.