The institutionalization of parkour
Blurring the Boundaries of Tight and Loose Spaces
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3978080 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Stefano Tani (0000-0002-5418-8702, University of Helsinki, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2024 |
| Volume | 25 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 658-676 |
| Publication date | 2024-04-20 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Social & Cultural Geography (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1464-9365 • E-ISSN: 1470-1197 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/14649365.2023.2199707 |
| OpenAlex | W4366086781 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 4 |
| References cited | 36 |
During its twenty-year history as a globally popular lifestyle sport, parkour has undergone institutionalization, professionalization and commercialization. In this article, the analysis of these changes is based on interviews conducted with Finnish traceurs who have long experience in parkour as practitioners and coaches, with some of them having parkour as their main occupation. Earlier research with the same participants provides the background to the subject and offers an overview of the development of the Finnish parkour scene. Special attention is paid to the ways in which indoor facilities and parkour parks have changed traceurs' relationships with urban public spaces. These changes are analysed by applying the concepts of tight and loose spaces. The study shows how some participants strongly connected parkour to its original roots, whereas others emphasized its physical elements and were not that concerned about the sportization of the discipline. Due to the increased popularity of indoor facilities and parkour parks, parkour's visibility in public spaces had diminished, which had decreased encounters between traceurs and other users of the same space and thus decreased parkour's potential to loosen urban spaces – to make them more tolerant towards different ways of being
Aesthetics · Art · Commercialization · Institutionalisation · Political science · Popularity · Professionalization · Public space · Social science · Sociology · Subject (documents · Adventure Sports and Sensation Seeking · Engineering · Law · Outdoor and Experiential Education · Sports, Gender, and Society
Lifestyle sport, public policy and youth engagement
Loose Space
Parkour as acrobatics
An existential phenomenological examination of parkour and freerunning
Designing Parkour-style training environments for athlete development
Managing alternative sports
Parkour, The Affective Appropriation of Urban Space, and the Real/Virtual Dialectic
Contestation and Conformity
From Obstacle to Opportunity
Parkour
Walking as an Aesthetic Practice and a Critical Tool
From post-game to play-by-play
The indoorisation of outdoor sports
If I climb a wall of ten meters’
Le Parkour
Constructing authenticity in contemporary consumer culture
Sporting embodiment
Just a sport made up in a car park
Loosening/tightening spaces in the geographies of hanging out
More-than-human playful politics in young people's practices of dwelling with the city
Playing with fear
Parkour, the City, the Event
Sense and the city
We close towns for a living
Parkour, Anarcho-Environmentalism, and Poiesis
Generation X Games', Action Sports and the Olympic Movement
| Unique citing works | 4 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 4 |
| Citation span | 2025 - 2026 (2) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 3 |