Something more, something better, something else, is needed: a renewed fête on London’s South Bank

This chapter is interested in some of Lefebvre’s more optimistic ideas about the possibilities of urbanisation and in exploring these through the analysis of an actually-existing set of urban public spaces in and around London’s Southbank Centre (at the heart of the wider ‘South Bank’ district). Drawing on data collected over the course of a 4-year ethnographic study of the transformation of the Southbank Centre, the chapter will seek to theorise and understand the ongoing transformation of the area via recourse to Lefebvre’s ideas about play as a transcendent, productive force in the city. The chapter will be most interested in the more practical, institutional and pedagogic dimensions of subordinating to play in the city according to Lefebvre, and how aspects of the transformation of London’s South Bank might be interpreted in this vein. While not entirely uncritical, the chapter will adopt Lefebvre’s sometimes optimistic stance to argue that there may yet be some hope for ‘the creation of places appropriate to a renewed fête fundamentally linked to play’ (Lefebvre 1996: 171) in contemporary cities.