The Leisure of Grey Spaces, Urban Play and the Chromatic Turn

This book explores the concept of leisure through the lens of colour, offering a fresh and innovative perspective on how chromatic elements shape our understanding of health, wellbeing, and environmental ethics. By focusing on the material and symbolic significance of hues, particularly blue, green, and grey, the book delves into the ways these colours influence leisure spaces and activities. From children’s play to surfing in artificial wave pools and skateboarding, the chapters examine diverse leisure practices across locations such as the UK, Russia, Turkey, East Asia, and North America. The book also challenges the traditional focus on blue and green spaces by highlighting the potential of grey spaces—urban environments like city streets, rooftops, and industrial landscapes—as sites of healthy and meaningful leisure.

Through 15 chapters based on original empirical research, this book introduces the nascent field of chromatic leisure, offering new conceptual frameworks that add depth and nuance to leisure scholarship. It critically examines how grey spaces, often overlooked in health and well-being discourse, provide alternative ways to frame leisure, embracing ambiguity, hybridity, and complexity. This book is essential reading for students, scholars and policymakers in leisure studies, social geography, urbanism, and health and well-being research.

The chapters in this book were originally published in Leisure Studies and are now accompanied by three new chapters and an updated introduction.