‘Parkour’ is a new name for what is, essentially, a practice as

old as humankind: utilising the ability to employ ‘an astounding

range of motion and range of options for how to move through
a given set of obstacles’ (Toorock, 2005). However, in the
recent incarnation that is Parkour, we have a distinctly urban
phenomenon in which the practitioner ‘seeks to run in a
straight line through a given environment (a city or
neighbourhood, for instance) and find a way over every single
element in their path, including climbing buildings when
necessary’ (A-infos, 2005). As such it has been linked, in what
little literature is available, with an attempt to ‘remap’ the city
and ‘escape from the forces of striation and repression’ (Geyh,
2005) associated with the construction of contemporary urban
space (Daskalaki, Stara & Imas, 2007). The ‘resistance’
inherent in Parkour has been linked with ‘the Situationist
traditions in exploring modern architechture as oppressive to
the individual and societal consciousness’ (A-infos, 2005). One
such tradition, the dérive, was defined by Guy Debord, the
most well known of the 1950’s Situationist Internationale (SI)
group, as

a technique of rapid passage through varied ambiances

[in which] one or more persons during a certain period
drop their usual motives for movement and action, their
relations, their work, their leisure activities, and let
themselves be drawn by the attractions of the terrain and
the encounters they find there (Debord, 1958)

Whilst Parkour is largely practised as a sport-cum-art form, very

much concerned with physical movement and fluid
engagement with the environment (Geyh, 2005), the dérive is
intended as a psychogeographical research technique which
reveals and maps ‘the precise laws and specific effects of the
geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the
emotions and behaviour of individuals’ (Debord, 1955, cited by
Banks, no date) and, as such, represents a more cerebral
approach. Yet both could be said to ‘cultivate an awareness of
the ways in which everyday life is presently conditioned and
controlled [and] the ways in which this can be exposed and
subverted’ (Plant, 1992). It is this common theme which I will
explore in this piece, to argue that both of these practices
represent different ends of the spectrum of
psychogeographical, urban resistance.

Guy Debord’s Society of the Spectacle ([1967] 1994) outlined

the Situationist’s theory of society dominated and controlled by
the ‘spectacle’ which he defines as ‘not a collection of images;
rather, it is a social relationship between people that is
mediated by images’ (1994:12), and ‘argued that capitalism
had turned all relationships transactional, and that life had
been reduced to a spectacle’ (Marshall, 1992). In many ways
simply a re-working of Marx’s view of alienation, what the
Situationists added was ‘the recognition that in order to ensure
continued economic growth, capitalism has created ‘pseudo-
needs’ to increase consumption’ (Marshall, 1992).

These notions, of a global society premised on consumption

and spectacle, whilst new and somewhat avant-garde in 1967,
are widely propounded in many quarters today (Pinder,
2004:109) and tie in closely with Daskalaki et al’s (2008) notion
of the ‘corporatisation of the city’ where ‘commodification
within capitalist cultural contexts has reinforced separation,
fragmentation and atomisation. Open spaces promote
corporate images that reduce the public to mere consumers’
(2008:53). What we have, then, in (post)modern cities is a
sense of ‘non-place’ achieved through ‘the privatisation of what
was once perceived as public space’ (2008:53) within a
landscape of ‘highly prescriptive (albeit often covertly so)
spatial structures, that exemplify restricting socio-political
structures of homogenisation, control and domination’
(2008:52). Thus, just as, in the Situationists writings, ‘urban
planning is presented as the enemy of the city as a realm of
possibility and emancipation’ (Pinder, 2004:112), so do
Daskalaki et al (2008:53) state that ‘the forces of capitalism
have converted places that could encourage difference and
interaction to non-places of homogenisation and indifference’.

For the Situationists, ‘the city was seen as the spatial form of
capitalism at its most complete – but also, conversely, the city
provided the people and resources needed for radical social
change’ (Banks, no date). Debord’s Theory of the Dérive (1958)
was intended to ‘provoke us to see space differently’ (Banks, no
date), ‘to seek out reasons for movement other than those for
which an environment was designed’ (Plant, 1992) and thus to
‘enable a revolutionary reappropriation of landscape’ (Bonner,
1989, cited by Banks, no date).
Parkour, whilst somewhat different in its method, fits this bill
perfectly. Developed in the Parisian Banlieus (suburbs) by
childhood friends David Belle and Sébastien Foucan, Parkour
may be seen as a response to what Daskalaki et al (2008:55)
describe as being

Among the most alienating and dehumanising urban

clusters in the world … a ruthless simplification of the
Corbusian Ville Contemporaine, with a grid of identical
high-rises towering over sprawls of land in between; spaces
with token gestures of landscaping … which cannot
mitigate the greater socio-political, as well as architectural,
failure of the development to create any sense of public
life.
The practice of Parkour involves leaps, jumps and vaults to
overcome the obstacles ‘that are intended to limit movement
(walls, curbs, railings, fences) or that unintentionally hamper
passage (lampposts, street signs, benches) through the space’
(Geyh, 2006), and to do this as smoothly and efficiently as
possible. Thus Parkour becomes almost an art form, but one
which ‘demonstrates a resistance to [urban space’s]
disciplinary functions, particularly as manifest in the urban
street grid’ (Geyh, 2006). Parkour, as Daskalaki et al (2008:56)
argue, provides ‘a sense of freedom from pre-defined
perceptual routes and regimented experiences … spaces
acquire a new use, become a liberating rather than restricting
element in human experience’. They cite the words of one
practitioner of Parkour:

Society looks down on what we do as a bad thing, but they

built up this concrete jungle around us. Concrete, roofs,
 whatever. And we’re told we can only walk in a certain way,
we can only move in a certain way. Mankind has struggled
for centuries to be free. The pursuit of Parkour for us is a
pursuit of freedom. The first big high I got from Parkour was
when I was sitting on a rooftop in central London. A pigeon
sat with us. We were where the birds were and I suddenly
felt free (2008:56).
I feel certain that Debord would applaud such sentiments,
fitting as they are to the Situationist’s project of ‘bringing
private desires into the public realm, giving the emotional and
affectual a place in the urban environment’ (Shields, 1996:244).
Yet I would like to go further in my comparison, lifting it from
the theoretical to the practical, to suggest that we can all
partake in these ‘socially symbolic act[s], a form of resistance
to cityscapes that alienate, restrict and subjugate’ (Daskalaki et
al, 2008:57), through the practice of dérive.

It has been suggested that anyone can become involved in

Parkour, that ‘anyone can immediately begin practicing it on a
zero budget simply by running outside and beginning to
interact with their environment’ (A-infos, 2005). Whilst I would
not dispute this per se, I would argue that Parkour requires a
level of fitness and expertise which necessitates a substantial
commitment of time and energy. To dérive, on the other hand,
simply requires a willingness to let go of pre-conceived ideas
and to remain open to new experiences and emotional
responses (Debord, 1958). So, whilst a dérive can simply be a
walk or cycle ride through a known or unknown place, other
suggested dérives include: exploring a city by blindly following
a map of a different city (Debord & Wolman, cited by Plant,
1992); the algorithmic dérive (Banks, no date) which involves a
series of instructions – eg: first left, second right, third left –
which are repeated for the duration; the ‘possible rendezvous’
(Debord, 1958) in which an individual goes to a pre-arranged
spot which may be known or unknown and where s/he may or
may not rendezvous with another individual. The point, in any
case, is to ‘highlight the emotive aspects of the city, where
places are commonly characterised not just by physical data
but by their powers of ‘attraction’: who hangs out where and
when shapes the identity of sites and spaces’ (Shields,
1996:245).

In conclusion then, I have highlighted the ways in which

Parkour, as a highly physical activity, and the dérive, as a more
cerebral activity, occupy different ends of a spectrum of urban
resistance. This resistance, to the restricting and homogenizing
effect of (post)modern, ‘corporatised’ cities, represents an
attempt to re-map and reclaim the city from the debilitating
structures of urban planning, both in the physical and
emotion/psychogeographical sense. Whilst Parkour requires
commitment and dedication to achieve the necessary fitness
and expertise, the dérive offers an opportunity for anyone to
explore the psychgeographical nature of cities and to resist the
ever-encroaching corporatisation of public space.