Urban Running

Parkour and Freerunning in the United States - NY Times

I first heard about this from a Warren Ellis comics naturally. The idea behind parkour is to move from one point in a urban area to another in the shortest time possible. That means using rooftops, stairwells, the tops of cars and just about anything that previously looked like an obstacle as a new means of getting across town. The urban runner's style is similar to that of a Brazilian form of fighting that looks more like a dance than a martial art. The whole system is fluid, rolling the body to match the terrain while maintaining forward momentum. If you look at Bruce Lee's style of fighting (which is what the Cowboy Bebop character Spike Spiegel's fighting style is based around) you'll see striking similarities. The whole concept is perfectly supermodern.