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Transportation planning has conventionally examined mobility from the standpoint of the efficiency of transportation systems, based on trips as units of analysis, overlooking the social needs of excluded groups, such as children. Understanding children’s geographies provides insight into one of the basic social needs of children, intrinsically related to mobility: play. Disadvantages in mobility, along with other social conditions further limit children’s autonomy in their neighbourhood. This chapter proposes the term playability as a concept that intertwines both needs. A case study of neighbourhood analyses the playability needs of children from their perspective and that of the community. Findings suggest that, in a walkable, built environment, issues from criminal activity directly influence children’s playability, even more than automobile presence. Furthermore, community perspective on playability, as mostly limited to structured play in designated spaces and time, separates mobility from play and thus limits opportunities for social inclusion. A change in both, acknowledging children’s need for play and mobility, and their reciprocity, and incorporating measures to improve it, may provide a different framework for transportation and urban planning at the local level, one that seeks greater social inclusion of children.

In this chapter, I utilize insights from symbolic interaction to analyze the identity work processes of larp subculture participants to construct and perform their in-game identities. I extend the research on larp subcultures in two ways. First, I place larping within the larger context of leisure subcultures and society by arguing that larping is representative of changes in leisure and subcultures in postmodern society. Second, I draw upon ethnographic data collected among the New England Role-playing Organization (NERO) to analyze larpers character identity performances. RPG and Larp researchers have developed several theories about the relationship between larp participants and their character performances. While these concepts provide a helpful framework for understanding the participant-character relationship, they undertheorize the in-game constructed performance of identity. Using symbolic interaction theory, I analyze the identity work processes larpers use to construct and perform their larp identities extending our understanding of the similarities between everyday identity and larpers' character identity performances.

So What’s New? is a play that centres on the lives of four female characters, Dee, her daughter Mercedes, Thandi and Pat. The play text provides a structural oppressive and gender specific framework exposing a social, political and economic background which demonstrates how African women used the informal sector in order to survive economically. It also provides a discussion about mothers and daughters and sexual activity. As the play progresses Mercedes talks to Thandi about the harm of selling illegal drugs to young people. The play centres on the impact of these relationships on the women and how they deal with their problems and fears. In this play African women’s experiences are not peripheral but are brought to the fore and celebrated with humour, pathos and admiration. Dike uses the play text to juxtapose two very different images of South Africa. One is the background of violence (perpetrated mainly by males) and the other is the lives of three women and one young girl centred round The Bold and The Beautiful, a soap opera (a feminine genre). Dike used the lives and stories of three women on which to base her play. All three women are independent and obsessed with the soap The Bold and The Beautiful. Dee’s daughter, Mercedes, is a schoolgirl who is politically aware and her boyfriend, Victor, is a political activist. These two characters provide the political background that underpins the fighting and the continuation of the struggle. By locating the play in a shebeen Dike is acknowledging the important role shebeens play in their communities.