The power of leisure in city centres: Creating lifestyle centres

Integrating leisure facilities can significantly enhance the liveliness of city centres. This transformation has led to the emergence of lifestyle centres — environments where living, visiting, working, shopping, socialising, sports and recreation coexist and reinforce one another, generating a unique dynamic. Places such as Manchester, Eindhoven and Copenhagen provide interesting examples of lifestyle centres. Leisure is not the (only) solution; the combination and integration of all these different functions create the dynamic environment. This ‘experience economy’ philosophy was first proposed by Pine & Gilmore. This paper explores the advantages of integrating leisure with other functions in city centres, how to get this process started and the role of the experience economy strategy. This article is also included in The Business & Management Collection which can be accessed at https://hstalks.com/business/.