Drifting in the Trees: Creating Playgrounds withRecreational Urban Tree Climbing

This paper inves9gates how recrea9onal urban tree climbing is a playful ac9vity that 1 creates new ways of experiencing the city by transforming a liminal space, the canopy, into a play place.Tree climbing is the act of climbing trees in public urban areas for recrea9onal purposes.Cooke, a London-based climber, suggests it can be done alone or accompanied, and with or without equipment.(Cooke, 2016) Colloquial informa9on shows it is prac9ced in US and Northern European ci9es, but it remains largely undocumented .Curiosity towards this sport-like ac9vity led me to 2 the hypothesis that climbers transform our percep9on of canopies into micro-spaces of play and this research is mo9vated by the possibility that the canopy could func9on as a sort of nature-based playground.