Du Flâneur au traceur: playful bodies in urban spaces

Abstract This paper investigates how play practices affect players’ relationships with the urban environment through the bodily movement and performances that characterize them. Building on a definition of playful behavior derived by semiotics of culture, we investigate urban play from the perspective of motor praxology to outline how movement is central for the experience of the players. We then concentrate on the role of semiotic valorizations in different urban contexts, notably the famous typology of Metro users by Floch and different kinds of ludic mobility. Finally, we combine these two perspectives with the zemic model realized within existential semiotics in order to create a typology or urban players as well as urban playful enunciation modes.