Skateboarding is growing in popularity and it is far and away the most popular urban sport with a not insignificant industry behind it. Skateboarders are unique in seeing not just a purpose for many urban scapes the majority of the population would loathe, but having a passion for these places also.
In Paris there is a rapidly growing use of roller blades, skateboards and push scooters for commuting purposes. Also there are places in Paris where skaters have become a symbol of the landscape itself the Jardins du Trocadéro is a prime example, where daily skaters gather to show off their skills to the tourists.
The UK has an enviable reputation in the Skateboarding world, generating many stars who remain largely unheard of outside the UK skateboarding fraternity but are almost household names in California and elsewhere. Skateboarding is not a fad, it is here to stay.
There are few other activities which incite so much vitriol, but headlines such as ‘Grandma killed by Skateboard yobs’ have not happened. The occasional annoyed pedestrian is surely a small price to pay for a sport which brings colour, skills and life back into the concrete jungle. A sport which allows youth in some of our most depressed areas to excel and in fact increases the worth of the place itself, rather than with footballers who are shipped off to Cheshire mansions. A sport which sees groups of harmless youths inevitably policing depressed areas simply by their presence.
I don’t have much reason to think about skateboarders in terms of my work. There was once a time when I was asked to write a comment in favour of banning skateboarders as they were a risk to urban tree planting – but it was impossible to justify this, skateboards cannot get close enough to trees to damage them, there is much more of a risk from mobility scooters and pedestrians. In fact planting urban trees would diminish areas to skateboarders.
The sheer hatred of skateboarders has convinced some council’s to liaise directly with the skaters and provide ‘honeypot’ schemes in urban green space, as skateboarding is such a visible youth activity the NIMBY’s who complain about it should be made more aware of what is going on behind their backs and the true problems disenfranchised youth has to deal with, rather than councils simply pandering to such vitriol.
But as urban regeneration schemes continue to destroy the skateboarders habitat, Landscape Architects are using tricks to deliberately thwart skateboarders, surely this is simply unfair and very shortsighted. And shouldn't we in fact be encouraging more skateboard friendly landscape design into our urban communities to encourage this sport?
Skateboarding VS Architecture: A Study of Public Space and Materiality in Auckland City from SwineTrotters on Vimeo.
Comments
I must confess to be being a skateboarder myself, or was, getting far too old now, but the village has great longboard run in it! ahem.
I love the idea of skateboarding becoming an accepted mode of transport.
I often wonder when skateboarders migrate to a piece of street furniture and practice endless tricks and gain pleasure from it what the designer must think - will we actually ever see design that incorporates skating, seating (or another purpose) and aesthetics installed into townscapes?
I remember feeling unhappy when my daughter got into a skateboarding group but felt she had to learn from her own 'mistakes'. They absolutely won me over when they got her home late one night and the two older boys walked her right up to our door to apologise and accept responsibility for her being late. As I got to know them I realised the mistake was mine, not my daughter's. They were very protective of each other, and when she started dating one of them their warnings to him were a lot more severe than mine.
A huge problem for me is the way we see young people and especially in the urban environment. We seem to want to create areas where children and young people are acceptable but segragate them in the wider community. To some extent I think this is why we have such a big problem with young people.
A much better approach is to look at creating environments where young and old can share spaces with each other and create much more possitive interaction. On our last open day we had some children who were interested in taking part, but were on bikes. Rather than just telling them to go away I told them they were welcome but asked them to take their bikes home first and come back or put their bikes in a certain location where they would not be a nuisance.
They did take their revenge when it was my time in the stocks, but were well behaved and enjoyed joining in. One concern was that we did a street art project, where they were assigned a pavement stone given chalk and asked to decorate it. Some of the residents thought it would encourage graffitti, but the result were great and there has been no graffitti reported since the event. I am aware of one company that actively promotes this shared space approach, PlayLink. I'm hoping to do one of their walks and talks later this year, when the weather warms up.
http://www.playlink.org/
What a brilliant organisation, thanks for highlighting it George. Bernard Spiegal's articles are very insightful.