Spaces and leisure experiences in the city: building territories

Abstract

This article, with a theoretical scope based on bibliographical research, aims to problematize leisure in urban everyday life through the understanding and existence of territories for its experience. The territory category has gained more and more prominence in the studies that discuss the space and the relations of power that evidence the agents of its production and influence its appropriation. In this sense, thinking about leisure spaces and experiences in urban daily life leads us to reflect on the very configuration of leisure in cities, its contradictions and disputes. As results, two tendencies portrayed from two emblematic spaces in contemporary cities were identified: the emergence of leisure in territories of consumption – marked by capitalist relations of the market and by the economic dimension, like in shopping malls; which has overlapped leisure in territories of citizenship – marked by the search of its effectiveness as a social right and by the political dimension, like in public spaces such as squares and parks. It is realized, therefore, that the relations between leisure and its urban spaces as territories are permeated by divergent tensions and interests that are reflected in its daily appropriation, contributing to expand the possible analyzes between these two fields.