Do we only plan for energetic people?

Are you out of reach when you do parcour? Are you able to control yourself when you play football 3 hours every day? How many Marabou chocolate bars do you consume daily when you practice for the Copenhagen Marathon? Somehow these are all ‘far out’ questions, because you need some kind of control if you are to throw your body and soul across the inviting massives of the new urban district Ørestad in Copenhagen as parcour practicioners do in this video about urban movement.

If you play football 3 hours a day – because you somehow think that’s’ fun, challenging, entertaining and because you get support from the football-supporting family – then your base physical condition is probably also pretty much OK. Concerning the Marabou chocolate and the Marathon, I do hope that there is still space enough for many Marabou bars (I haven’t completed the Marathon yet). Perhaps it could make the daily practice even more attractive.

These warm-up thoughts bring me to my point: that there seems to be a growing group of citizens who should not be considered as a risk group when it comes to unhealthy living. Maybe the members of this group do in fact have a very stressful everyday life and they get sick like everyone else, but when it comes to physical activities and the physical diseases that could eventually come from very modest activities, this group is not in the danger zone.

Perhaps it’s because we like survivors, perhaps because we play football, run, climb or … some other reason. But we end up planning our cities in accordance with preferences of the elite and the survivors.

We put up structures and sculptures in our cities that are difficult to access and we belief that an intuitive comprehension of urban art is possible (which we should continue believing to a large extent ...). We create urban spaces that demand excellence or an artistic sense of things to be experienced with all its qualities, and in particular it needs the love for physical activities. We create a temporary urban life based on activities that sometimes demands interest for architecture and running-skills.

Let’s keep doing that. There are uncountable reasons why these tendencies should be supported. But perhaps sometimes we could create urban space scenarios, architectural conditions and spaces for people that would never consider showing up for the annual architecture running-event in Copenhagen, pass by the VM-mountain in Ørestad or grab the basketball when the family is out in the city on a Saturday afternoon.

Should architecture and urban design only be used to support the strong and energetic citizens even more? Or should it be an obligatory course in the ‘school of urban space’ that more than just a small bazaar or a flea market is needed if the group of non-runners, non-players and non-extreme-sportsmen is to be mobilized?