Special issue on being outdoors part 2: being in the urban outdoors

Abstract

Traditionally, outdoor recreation has been characterised as taking place in remote, rural and sometimes distant and exotic settings, that are somehow separate, and separated from normal places of work and residence (Pigram and Jenkins 2006). Recreation in such settings has been premised on an assumed desire to ‘escape’ from the urban and the mundane aspects of everyday life to nature-based settings defined by beauty and tranquillity (Williams 1995). This characterization has set up a duality between the rural and urban, a position we believe is unhelpful as scholars try to understand the contemporary experience of outdoor recreation in a changing world. A defining aspect of our changing world is rapid urbanization. Kundu and Pandey (2020) indicate that the global urban population has ballooned from 0.75 billion in 1950–4.22 billion in 2018. By the mid-twenty-first century, it is estimated that 68% of the world’s population will live in urban settings. These figures point to the increasing importance of urban, suburban and peri-urban settings (the fringe in-between the urban and the rural) for recreation in the outdoors – expanding and challenging the accepted norm that outdoor recreation is only meaningful in rural, remote and faraway lands. Furthermore, the wider call for increased ‘locavism’, a call to partake in activities closer to home in a carbon conscious (Hollenhorst et al., 2014) and COVID-19 afflicted era, underscores the need for scholars to explore how urbanites experience recreation in their own backyards. There are some obvious benefits to embracing outdoor recreation in urban settings. Bringing the ‘outdoors to the people’ has been a key driver behind the global ‘conservation in the city’movement (Parris et al. 2018). This shift in thinking recognizes the decline in back-country outdoor recreation, where fewer people are visiting National Parks and other protected lands and waters, and instead proffers meaningful conservation experiences in the nooks and crannies within the city boundary (McDonald 2012). There is ample evidence to suggest that having nature inside cities, reduces stress and obesity, and improves well-being for urban dwellers (White et al. 2020; Bell et al. 2018; Foley and Kistemann 2015; Pigram and Jenkins 2006). Furthermore, new populations that have traditionally been excluded from outdoor recreation, often regarded as the realm of the highly-educated, well-off and of mainly Caucasian descent, are now encouraged to explore their backyard, on their terms. This recognizes that the ‘backyard’ is a term that is best viewed as being without limits, enabling it to encompass both the near