Planning, Play, and Participation:The Extra-Parliamentary Residents’ Playground at Høje Gladsaxe (1969) as a Model for Sociospatial Transformation and Engaging Urban Citizenship

Based on a case study of an ‘extra-parliamentary residents’ playground’ at the social housing estate Høje Gladsaxe (1962–68), north of Copenhagen, this chapter investigates the critique of modernist social housing and urban planning that emerged during the late 1960s, discussing residents’ critical spatial practices as both extra-parliamentary, political practices that are part of community building and as processes of aesthetic modification with respect to social housing. The playground was planned by a ground of residents working together with professionals from the fields of architecture, sociology, psychology, and pedagogy and erected during a single day (26 April 1969) in response to a lack of recreational spaces for children and a lack of involvement of residents in decision-making processes at the estate. Hence, the playground proposed a new model for participatory planning, which entailed more engaging, user-based sociospatial practices; it can, furthermore, be viewed as a new model for a more socially and aesthetically involved kind of urban citizenship.