The Cross-Media Ecologist feels welcome to your city, the playfield of our Ludean travails. A lot has been said about its buildings, but not enough about the space between them, a space meaningless without the events taking place there. Were it not for you charming Melbournians, the architecture of Melbourne would be but an empty husk waiting to be activated by the tactical intervention of its users.

The buildings, the rules, the streets aren’t the real city. They are just the proving grounds where the city takes place. A city is not a thing: it’s a process. The buildings are the skeleton that remains when you take away the real city. Like Soylent Green in the old
Charlton Heston movie, like the play that fuels the Ludean project, a city is *people*. *You* people!

The Cross-Media Ecologist (that’s me!) rejects the surface signs of the city and embraces instead the play of meeting created by a programme of activity. You reinscribe the city as your playground. Me, I am glad you let me play along, and happy for the chance to document your play. Please carry on. I’ll be watching you from this fantastic sidewalk cafe, taking notes. And maybe, only maybe, I will come down to play with you, if you’ll just let me.