Introduction to the Special Section: Recreational mobilities in (and beyond) the compact city

What happens if one takes recreational mobilities as a point of departure for making sense of the compact city? This special issue offers interdisciplinary explorations of how one might approach studies of cities and metropolitan regions in new ways, using recreational mobilities as both lens and focal point. In so doing, the contributions aim to advance recreational mobilities as a critical theme for scholarship and practice. We specifically hope to demonstrate how such an approach is fruitful for grappling with the legacies of rationalism and modernism in spatial planning, with a focus on the contemporary ideal of the ‘compact city’ as both phenomenon and normative impulse that has come to dominate discourses of urban design and urban planning in recent decades. ¹