Introduction

This chapter changes tack slightly to consider a particular point of intersection between physical activity, the built environment and behavioural readings of health: the event. More specifically, it draws on the phenomenon of mass participation running events (MPREs) to explore how ‘event thinking’ has permeated the governmental and non-governmental aspiration of creating a more active populace. In contrast to the previous chapter's focus on incidental physical activity such as walking and cycling, this considers efforts to promote and encourage the uptake of sport as leisure. Defined by the Council of Europe's European Sport Charter as, ‘all forms of physical activity which, through casual participation, aim at expressing or improving physical fitness and mental well-being, forming social relationships or obtaining results in competition at all levels‘(1992: 15), sport is increasingly being cast as a solution for an array of social, cultural, economic and developmental ills. At the same time, urban events are also being seen as a ‘panacea for the contemporary social and economic ills of cities’ (Waitt 2008: 513). As such, sporting events are far from politically innocuous. Yet, one has only to look at the interplay of sport and British imperial ambition (Stoddart 1988; Majumdar 2006), apartheid (for its justification, eventual unravelling and more recent efforts to eradicate its legacy) (Booth 2003) and communist ideologies (Riordan 1999, 2001) to see that it has long been used to realise political ambition. This chapter thus dwells on the salience of sport in relation to the governmental aspiration of increasing participation.

Sport England's ‘value of sport monitor’ lists seven domains where sport is thought to ‘deliver benefits across a wide range of public policy agendas’ (Sport England 2010a).