Bodies, Boards, and Wheels in Urban Public Space: Skateboarding the Ledges, Rails, and Steps of the City

Abstract

This paper considers skateboarding practices in urban public spaces. Often subversive, the interactions between skateboarders and built features are also regularly captured in visual imagery in print and online. The paper documents encounters between skateboarders and the built environment using visual geographic information and photo representation. Through content analysis of imagery from Instagram posts and Thrasher magazine, the aim is to organize visual/volunteered data to represent the varied types of interactions between skateboarders and particular features of the built environment. The images suggest that skateboarders seek out structures that are typically elements within a corporate plaza or city hardscape such as stairs, rails, planters. This imagery provides large amounts of data that researchers may cull in order to improve understanding of the ways such features are experienced, and of the potential conflicts that arise when a variety of users interact. The broader significance of the research contributes to the growing body of work that positions skateboarding as a legitimate practice in urban public spaces. Scholars, practitioners of architecture, and planners, among others may continue to engage with visualization methods to consider skateboarding as an evolving, responsive, embodied practice.