Constructing mobile place: tales from the run

This article examines the runner’s place construction process. We found that runners became skilled curators of their places, adapting and transforming them. We argue that this represents an embodied, dynamic and recursive mobile place construction, only possible through runners’ movement, questioning the notion of a fixed place. While running alongside participants during their regular runs, we conducted 20 running interviews. Employing a forehead camera enabled us to understand runners’ experiences, capturing novel insights compared to traditional stationary interviews. Using Grounded Theory (Glaser & Strauss, 1967/2006), we conceptualized that in every mobile place construction there are three interrelated instances: Selection, Interaction and Reflection. Our findings demonstrate that mobile place construction occurred while runners put these three dynamics in motion, forging and foregrounding their relationship with place. Therefore, they become runners as part of developing places, using specific affordances to shape these constructions. By recapturing the concept of place construction within the social sciences, this study underscores its relevance for understanding embodied, mobile, and personal mobile place construction.