Participatory urbanism: Making the stranger familiar and the familiar strange

Urban areas are planned structures that cannot easily be changed. Urban areas do however still afford physical spaces for various types of leisure expression and participation, from street art to parkour and from urban gaming to artistic happenings. Thus, while citizens who inhabit the urban areas cannot directly influence their structures, they can influence their contours through such leisure practices. In this chapter focus will be on how citizens’ engagement in locative leisure activities may allow them to co-create urban space. This participatory urbanism is a form of everyday democracy, which includes awareness of the structures in which we live as well as participation in the public sphere. Locative media projects shape events which seek to address everyday democracy. Specifically engaging in locative media projects can help create leisure experiences in the urban landscape that allow participants to relate to the structures of that landscape. I will critically examine locative media projects and the ideas behind them. I will then suggest a renewed approach to design of locative media by showing how locative media events can promote political awareness and participation by making "the familiar strange but also by making strangers familiar".