Places for leisure as interactive spaces of the city,

Leisure has thus taken on strong urban importance. The geographies of leisure, in its various senses, are explored by the author as important parts of contemporary spatial experience. It is emphasised how some places have become themed environments produced and transformed to be “consumed”, but also how leisure has favoured new forms of social interaction around new reference spaces that seem to cause a crisis for the traditional centralities of cities. In this sense leisure is interpreted as an expression of the power of production and subjectivisation, but also as an opportunity to construct urban perspectives and different forms of “resistance”. Particular attention is paid to the situations in which leisure and tourism activities reveal micropolitics and change tactics, promoted by the forms and modalities of interaction of the different social groups that give these spaces of entertainment and leisure a meaning. Departing from a reflection on the effects generated by place marketing in the Øresund region of Scandinavia, territorial competition processes are dealt with which, through programmes directed at leisure activities, put on the same level strategies to hold inhabitants, to attract companies of the creative industries, as well as catalyse visitor flows. But these policies often create “imaginative space”, spaces where technological skill in creating hyper-real environments is evident, to which the reality of the inhabitants does not correspond.