A Tribute to Isabelle McNeill and Her Video Essay Drones in the Banlieue
Alan O'Leary and Isabelle McNeill
Alan O'Leary pays tribute to Isabelle McNeill (1979–2025) and introduces her video essay Drones in the Banlieue.
vol. 10
Colourful Play in Hong Kong’s Rainbow Estate
Paul O’Connor, Julian Mcallister Groves, Yingxin Du and Tina Sze Nga Ho
From playable to instagrammable: Paul O’Connor, Julian Mcallister Groves, Yingxin Du and Tina Sze Nga Ho trace the ‘colorful’ history of the Choi Hung Public housing estate, and what that might mean for its future.
Beyond Nice: Mediating Urban life Through Play and Counter-play
Conor Moloney
Are we playing … or are we being played? In this conceptual contribution, Conor Moloney maps the tensions between public and counterpublic, culture and counterculture, play and counterplay in relation to urban experience.
Too Rich City: A Sinofuturist Playground
Hsin Hsieh
The artwork Too Rich City transforms China's housing crisis into a virtual playground, where NFT properties and augmented reality offer young people alternative forms of urban belonging. Hsin Hsieh both embraces and critiques this artwork.
Gamespace Odyssey: Notes on the Procedural Transformation of Athens
Connor Cook
Games and cities are shaped by protocols and procedures. Drawing on the concept of ‘Gamespace,’ Connor Cook discusses how gamic principles are applied to urban planning and how these might be playfully resisted in turn.
Defamiliarizing the City: Play, Affect, and the Activation of Imaginaries
Radmila Radojevic, Simeona Petkova and Núria Arbonés Aran
Play activates our imagination, but it can also fall short in fostering real change. Radmila Radojevic, Simeona Petkova and Núria Arbonés Aran reflect on this tension in relation to rapidly changing neighborhoods.
Babyccinos and Reel Making: Who is Really Playing?
Laura Vermeeren
A children’s menu, a play kitchen, a coloring book: Is that what makes a space #kidsproof? Laura Vermeeren explores how Instagram’s aestheticized content increasingly shapes what family leisure in the city should look like.
Seeing Like a Skater: Skateboarding as Poetic Technology
Alia ElKattan
Reflecting on her experiences of skateboarding in Cairo, New York and other cities as a form of ‘rolling ethnography’, Alia ElKattan positions ‘seeing like a skater’ as a new way to approach urban landscapes.
Urban Investors’ Play with Time: Stakes of the Game and Waiting as Playful Strategy
Anthony Albright and Frans-Willem Korsten
Anthony Albright and Frans Willem Korsten discuss the playful appropriation of a vacant building by a squatters’ group as part of an effort to recapture urban environments from the profit-oriented ‘game’ of waiting by investors.
Playable Cities: An Introduction
Carolyn Birdsall, Linda Kopitz and Alex Gekker
The city is a playground. But is it really? This introduction to the Playable Cities dossier discusses how cities are built, how cities are navigated, and how cities are resisted with and through play.
Come Out and Play: A Historical Exploration of Street Play and Urbanization in the Etiler Neighborhood in Istanbul
Bedriye Aylin Kartal
Focusing on Istanbul’s Etiler neighborhood, Aylin Kartal follows different waves of urban transformation from the 1950s onwards, connecting street play, urban planning and collective memory.
Framing London: Vernacular Photography and the Playable City in Student Life
Photini Vrikki and Giota Alevizou
Seeing and knowing a city are not necessarily the same: based on an interactive workshop with international students in London, Photini Vrikki and Giota Alevizou position photographic practices as a critical part of urban play.