taCity

Category: parkour

  • The Materiality of Die Hard

    Last night I had the privilege of watching Die Hard on the big screen at the Filmopolis Christmas Party. A great night, with an even greater film. Die Hard is one of those films that you can watch repeatedly, and rarely strays from perfection. Despite containing now tired Hollywood clichés,…

  • Toronto, “the World in One Place…”

    First off, an apology as I’m hideously late with this seeing as though I got back from Toronto at the end of June. But nevertheless, I felt that I should perhaps at least try to document my brief but exhausting visit to the ‘Hollywood of the North’. Thanks to the…

  • What a silly planker…

    After the death of an Australian man who was ‘planking’, I can’t help but feel that the news coverage has been a little bit too ‘hang-ringing-y’ – and there have been some calls to ban it altogether (although further examination of this story suggests that the Australian PM did not call…

  • The UK’s Cultural Quarters

    The notion of the cultural quarter is one that has been around for a while, yet is still being refined. Many cities across the UK have initiated the planning and development of a cultural quarter in an attempt to to stimulate growth and attempt to ‘re-vitalise’ the local economy along…

  • Parkour paper

    Just a quick post to let you know that the guys over at American Parkour have published my Environment and Planning D paper ‘Parkour, the City, the Event‘. You can read it here. If you don’t have access to the full paper from the journal website or your library doesn’t…

  • Toward a utopia of difference?

    Having been looking into the realms of urban subcultures for the past 12 months (mostly through parkour, but I find myself constantly amazed by people’s creativity and innovate capacity in their usage of urban space), I recently re-read David Pinder’s book, Visions of the City, as it is a fantastic…

  • A Paradox of the Urban Condition

    Gary Bridge once asked “Surely it is time to banish reason, with all it’s exclusivities and homogenisations, from the city, and to let difference in?” (Bridge, 2004: 1). A poignant issue, given that that more and more people are flooding into our cities. And yet, they continue to show signs…