Nightscapes of Play: Enjoyment of Architecture and Urban Space through Bicycling

Abstract

Anti‐automobile, anti‐capitalist, and pro‐environmental worldviews are known to shape bicyclists’ right to the city demands. This research uncovers another layer of their radical engagement with the city: playful enjoyment of architectural structures and urban space, using the case study of Midnight Mystery Ride, a community bicycle ride taking place in the middle of the night once a month in several cities around the world. Through theoretical lenses of play and rhythmanalysis, I argue that bicyclists at night take over spaces built with exchange vale in mind and introduce use value in the same spaces. Interviews with bicyclists demonstrate how their unconventional use of space questions separation from natural rhythms and nature. I demonstrate that their nighttime use of the city is also a critique of how urban space is organised largely for profit and discipline and of how the human and playful potential of urban space are not fully realised.

From the Right to Mobility to the Right to the Mobile City: Playfulness and Mobilities in Bogotá’s Cycling Activism

“…In all, while explicit connections with the right to the city have been suggested across the literature, they remain to be elaborated (though see : Raquel, 2018). In embracing thinking on urban play, this essay follows others who have conceptualised bicycle resistance as a form of playful prefigurative action (Furness, 2007;Morhayim, 2018). However, it moves forward by explicitly tracing these activities back to the right to the city and redirecting the right to mobility towards a more Lefebvrian trajectory.…”

“…Research on urban play is burgeoning, emphasising that certain characteristics of cities (diversity, density, and the built environment) inhibit or facilitate play, and may harbour the potential for political transformation (Mann, 2015;Stevens, 2007;Walz, 2010). Within this work, certain forms of moving in the city, like parkour (Ameel & Tani, 2012), skateboarding (Stratford, 2016), and cycling (Morhayim, 2018), have been examined to interrogate the possibilities afforded by infrastructures beyond the intentions of urban planners. What these analyses reveal, is that the unruly appropriation of space for play does away with the rigidity of the organisation of urban space and thus helps to de-commodify space, restore its use value, and '...create forms of order that might be temporary but over which we exact some control; we use it to give expression to a desire to enliven the banal, breathe life into the fabric of existence, and enjoy moments of freedom and reflection' (Stratford, 2016, p. 352).…”

“…Yet, for all the threads that tie playfulness to the right to the city, few accounts have given due attention to the political and transformative potential of play as part of claims to the right to the city. While the two have loosely been brought together (Furness, 2007;Morhayim, 2018), further analysis is warranted if we are to reframe everyday mobility along playful Lefebvrian lines and heed the call to "replace travel as adjunct to work with travel as pleasure" (Debord, 2006, p. 148). As I intend to argue, the encounters staged by biketivists in Bogotá elucidate how such a decoupling is possible.…”

“…I begin with a discussion of the right to the city and playfulness. While geographers have started to take play seriously as a mode of protest, few of these discussions draw explicit links to the right to the city (though see : Morhayim, 2018). Conversely, analyses of the right to the city seldom engage with the playful dimension of Lefebvre's proposal.…”

Rational versus Fashionable: Youth Identity, Play and Agency in Namibian Cycling Mobilities

“…The approach allows us to consider how people interact with objects through movement in meaningful ways, relating to play, resistance, belonging, empowerment or-on the other hand-experiencing oppression of their movement and, thus, autonomy. Morhayim (2018) and Castañeda (2020) discuss the freedom and right to the city afforded by the bicycle, which provides a range of sensory and playful experiences, thus opening the discriminatory boundaries of neighbourhoods and providing an alternative means of expression. Playfulness is positioned by Vannini (2011) as a deviation from one's usual work and social paths that suggest a freer 'wayfaring' style of movement.…”