Where life and leisure intersect: exploring the outdoors as a site of contradictory experiences for person’s living in poverty

ABSTRACT For individuals experiencing poverty and homelessness, acting out their lives in public spaces can be complicated, as their very existence might be viewed as a transgression of a spaces’ conceptualization [Lefebvre, H. 1991. The Production of Space. London: Blackwell.]. Within this paper, through the work of Henri Lefebvre and Don Mitchell, I examine the ways in which representations of public outdoor spaces in cities impact the lived experiences of those who engage with the sites as a means of survival. Through this work, I argue that the right to be is reliant on an individual’s ability to acceptably (re)produce spaces as they were conceived, or to otherwise be forced to exist in marginal spaces [Mitchell, D., and N. Heynen. 2009. “The Geography of Survival and the Right to the City: Speculation on Surveillance, Legal Innovation, and the Criminalization of Intervention.” Urban Geography 30 (6): 611–632. doi:10.2747/0272-3638.30.6.611; Snow, D., and M. Mulcahy. 2001. “Space, Politics, and the Survival Strategies of the Homeless.” American Behavioral Scientist 45 (1): 149–169. doi:10.1177/00027640121956962]. The empirical insights in this work emerged from nine months of field work at Start Me Up Niagara, a community centre in St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada, which works with people experiencing poverty and homelessness.