Sport for Community Building and Social Inclusion in the Urban Context

Recent research shows that sporting activities can contribute to the creation of communities and promote social inclusion in the urban context. Sport has gone beyond mere physical activity and has acquired social, cultural, urban, and political dimensions that need to be analyzed in order to develop effective governmental programs and appropriate incentives. The purpose of this article is to investigate the benefits, barriers, existing programs, and the role of design in sports as a means of community building, social inclusion, and city development. The study falls in the domain of design for social innovation and uses a literature review to develop ethnographic tools for analyzing sports communities. Social science literature shows that public spaces supporting sport do indeed contribute to community development, empowerment of marginalized groups, and overall citizen safety. Moreover, sport is shown as a favorable means of social inclusion, assisting in the reduction of physical, social, economic, or structural barriers of underrepresented people. It was found that the sports-related literature in the design field is focused more on the physical dimension of products than on its capacity to foster community and inclusion. For this purpose, the ongoing research has developed a field research protocol and a specialized tool kit that was applied to a series of bottom-up sports communities selected through a first mapping within the metropolitan area of Rome. Future research developments could lead to an understanding of how service and systemic design may promote social inclusion and community growth through sports in urban spaces.