Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures, tables and maps
- Acronyms
- About the author
- Acknowledgements
- one Introduction
- two Being sensible
- three Governing behaviour change in risky environments
- four Obesity and strategies of rule
- five The incidentally sensible city
- six Events and the lucratively sensible city
- seven The sensible drinker and the persistence of pleasure
- eight Spatial governance and the night-time economy
- nine What life is this? Some concluding thoughts
- Bibliography
- Index
six - Events and the lucratively sensible city
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 September 2022
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures, tables and maps
- Acronyms
- About the author
- Acknowledgements
- one Introduction
- two Being sensible
- three Governing behaviour change in risky environments
- four Obesity and strategies of rule
- five The incidentally sensible city
- six Events and the lucratively sensible city
- seven The sensible drinker and the persistence of pleasure
- eight Spatial governance and the night-time economy
- nine What life is this? Some concluding thoughts
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The evidence of the potential health gains from active lifestyles is clear. We now need a culture shift to achieve these goals. Changing inactive lifestyles and levels of inactivity presents a tremendous public health challenge – a challenge we must rise to if we are to improve health. The solution does not lie in any single innovation. Nor does it lie in advances in medical science. Current levels of physical activity are a reflection of personal attitudes about time use and of cultural and societal values. (Chief Medical Officer 2004: iii)
Introduction
This chapter changes tack slightly to consider a particular point of intersection between physical activity, the built environment and behavioural readings of health: the event. More specifically, it draws on the phenomenon of mass participation running events (MPREs) to explore how ‘event thinking’ has permeated the governmental and non-governmental aspiration of creating a more active populace. In contrast to the previous chapter's focus on incidental physical activity such as walking and cycling, this considers efforts to promote and encourage the uptake of sport as leisure. Defined by the Council of Europe's European Sport Charter as, ‘all forms of physical activity which, through casual participation, aim at expressing or improving physical fitness and mental well-being, forming social relationships or obtaining results in competition at all levels‘(1992: 15), sport is increasingly being cast as a solution for an array of social, cultural, economic and developmental ills. At the same time, urban events are also being seen as a ‘panacea for the contemporary social and economic ills of cities’ (Waitt 2008: 513). As such, sporting events are far from politically innocuous. Yet, one has only to look at the interplay of sport and British imperial ambition (Stoddart 1988; Majumdar 2006), apartheid (for its justification, eventual unravelling and more recent efforts to eradicate its legacy) (Booth 2003) and communist ideologies (Riordan 1999, 2001) to see that it has long been used to realise political ambition. This chapter thus dwells on the salience of sport in relation to the governmental aspiration of increasing participation.
Sport England's ‘value of sport monitor’ lists seven domains where sport is thought to ‘deliver benefits across a wide range of public policy agendas’ (Sport England 2010a).
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Governing Health and ConsumptionSensible Citizens, Behaviour and the City, pp. 117 - 142Publisher: Bristol University PressPrint publication year: 2011