October 6 2022

This issue of Urban Realm focuses on sport and wellness as we surface recent moves to democratise access to sport, encouraging people to get out and about at a time when staying in has become the norm.

At Meadowbank Sports Centre we see how elite and regular users cohabit a space that offers something for everyone. Cloaked in light-giving polycarbonate, its stacked halls and courts have hit the ground running.

Later we roll through Livingston Skatepark, a pitted landscape of bowls and ledges which is now the subject of a listing bid by West Lothian Council. A similar ethos drives the approach to Broomieknowe Golf Club, where an acknowledgement that more must be done to attract younger and female players is the key driver of change.

Elsewhere we delve into the developing field of net mapping, now employed by urbanists seeking solutions to cultural issues through a tangle of nodes and connections. More dramatically we visit the crisis-torn city of Beirut, still dealing with the repercussions of a disastrous fertiliser explosion which devastated the port. We cover one novel idea to bring some good from a terrible situation.

Catch up on all this and more in Urban Realm by securing your copy of issue 51.

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