Skateboarding, Space and the City: Architecture and the Body
Abstract
Skateboarders are an increasingly common feature of the urban environment - recent estimates total 40 million world-wide. We are all aware of their often extraordinary talent and manoeuvres on the city streets. This book is the first detailed study of the urban phenomenon of skateboarding. It looks at skateboarding history from the surf-beaches of California in the 1950s, through the purpose-built skateparks of the 1970s, to the street-skating of the present day and shows how skateboarders experience and understand the city through their sport. Dismissive of authority and convention, skateboarders suggest that the city is not just a place for working and shopping but a true pleasure-ground, a place where the human body, emotions and energy can be expressed to the full. The huge skateboarding subculture that revolves around graphically-designed clothes and boards, music, slang and moves provides a rich resource for exploring issues of gender, race, class, sexuality and the family. As the author demonstrates, street-style skateboarding, especially characteristic of recent decades, conducts a performative critique of architecture, the city and capitalism. Anyone interested in the history and sociology of sport, urban geography or architecture will find this book riveting.
... Skateboarding is simultaneously a high-performance competitive sport and a creative subculture. While this subculture cultivates an image of being alternative and progressive (Borden, 2001;Wheaton and Thorpe, 2022), it has also traditionally been dominated by men where a culture of hegemonic masculinity can go unchallenged White, 2021;Willing, 2022). In response to this, sociologists in particular have observed how a range of positive disruptions to dominant stereotypes and restrictive social environments in skateboarding now span various community activations, industry shifts and emerging studies. ...
... One key finding here is that the greater formal variety and lack of prescriptive function of public artworks led users to discover more and varied potential affordances. This mirrors observations by skateboarding researchers in terms of the appeal of street skating over conventional objects in skateparks (Borden, 2001;Giamarino and Willing, forthcoming;Giamarino, O'Connor and Willing, 2023). ...
... Paying attention to what it feels like to move centres the awareness of bodily moving and bodily knowing. Despite an emphasis on the visual in research on skateboarding, such as Borden's (2001) conceptualisation of "the skater's eye", which captures the skater's visualisation of skateable urban spaces, the visual is rarely just visual but a multisensorial experience (e.g. Fors et al., 2013;Hölsgens, 2021). ...
Skate/worlds brings together writers, educators, and activists who research skateboarding as a prefigurative learning tool.
Can skateboarding be therapeutic?
Does it align with efforts to queer and decolonise education?
And how to parent as a skater?
As the ecology of skateboarding expands and diversifies, the sensation of moving sideways gains socio-political and pedagogical relevance. This edited volume chronicles how we both learn to skate and learn from skateboarding – zooming in on topics including gestalt therapy, care work, motherhood, and grassroots advocacy.
Contributors: Åsa Bäckström, Rhianon Bader, John Dahlquist, Jessica Forsyth, Sophie Friedel, Arianna Gil, Sander Hölsgens, Lian Loke, Sanné Mestrom, Douglas Miles, Nadia Odlum, Adelina Ong, Noah Romero, Esther Sayers, Indigo Willing
... I begin by explaining how the learning theory of enskilment explains this "knack" (Pálsson, 1994) for excelling at leisure practices in polluted spaces. I then argue that this knack is particularly prominent in skateboarding, a leisure activity with a history of adept reappropriation of polluted spaces (Borden, 2001). To strengthen this claim, I present specific data of skateboarders building formal and informal skateparks on remediated Superfund sites and brownfields. ...
... Skateboarding's adept use of polluted spaces using DIY tactics is part of its culture of reappropriation of spaces, one that fluctuates in legitimacy across times and spaces (Hollett & Vivoni, 2021), with some becoming adopted by city planners and others immediately destroyed upon discovery. Borden's (2001) insight of situating skate culture within the context of Lefebvre's critique of everydayness provided an early theorization of skateboarding's reappropriation of space. Skateboarders offer a socio-political critique of public space in its very practice and participation. ...
... Skateboarding's enskiled uses of pollution, exemplified in its past uses of unused spaces and present uses in polluted spaces pivots on the concept of how skateboarding's activity changes the way one thinks and interacts with everyday objects that others take for granted (Borden, 2001). For the skater in the city, all things are shining in a spiritual esthetic (Dreyfus & Kelly, 2011), particularly spaces that relate to disaster and destruction (Thorpe, 2015). ...
... In this nocturnal context, new uses and ways of using public spaces are observed, which generate opportunities for emancipation and give rise to an alternative city centered on play. Among the different urban sports and games, the so-called 'street sports' stand out for making particularly diverse and intense use of this night urban environment to develop their practices, such as BMX, parkour, or skateboarding (Borden, 2001). ...
... En este contexto nocturno se observan nuevos usos y formas de aprovechamiento de los espacios públicos, los que generan oportunidades de emancipación y dan lugar a una ciudad alternativa centrada en el juego. Entre los distintos juegos y deportes urbanos, los denominados "deportes alternativos" se destacan por hacer un uso particularmente diverso e intenso de este ambiente urbano nocturno para desarrollar sus prácticas, tales como BMX, el parkour o el skateboarding (Borden, 2001). ¿Cómo favorece el espacio público nocturno estos nuevos usos para estas prácticas de deportes urbanos como el skateboarding? ...
... Skateboarding corresponds to a ludic practice based on the use of the skateboard, a simple artifact made up of a small wooden board supported by two axles and four wheels. Its origin comes from the technological combination of roller skates, the scooter, and surfing that took place during the first half of the 20 th century (Borden, 2001). Since 1960, when the massive manufacture of skateboards began in California, it has dispersed worldwide and has developed not only in aspects related to its sporting qualification, but also in the diversification and sophistication of its modalities and their corresponding urban spaces. ...
Este artículo explora la noche urbana como un espacio y una temporalidad lúdica alternativa producida por algunos deportes urbanos. Se trata de un espacio habitado que se basa en las oportunidades que ofrece el pulso urbano cotidiano de la ciudad diurna productiva/ congestionada en contraste con una ciudad nocturna lúdica/improductiva/fluida. Se analizan las prácticas del skateboarding en Santiago a partir de las temporalidades del deporte urbano contemporáneo en el espacio público, con el objetivo de comprender cómo la noche ofrece un escenario propicio para el surgimiento de un espacio público alternativo. El espacio público comparece con una capacidad insospechada de flexibilidad, aunque no sin transgresiones. La metodología de trabajo se basa en la consulta de archivos y fuentes primarias que recopilan relatos e imágenes de esta práctica, utilizando como fuente una revista especializada de skateboarding.
... Premièrement, les visites mettent en avant qu'un habiter alternatif permet de révéler les richesses du territoire, à l'image du skateboard qui utilise des lieux « banals » pour tenter de réécrire la ville en insérant du sens dans les espaces qui en sont dénués a priori (Borden, 2001 ;Laurent et Gibout, 2010). (Raymen, 2019a). ...
... D'une part, la ville toute entière devient ce terrain de jeu, à l'image de l'idée d'Aldo van Eyck pour qui tous les éléments du mobilier peuvent être détournés par les enfants dans une finalité ludique en ce qu'ils sont plus « vrais » que le mobilier créé pour le jeu lui-même (Paquot, 2015). Ainsi, Borden (2001) (2) le Schéma de cohérence territoriale de Bordeaux a intégré, en 2019, le skateboard dans ses principes guidant l'aménagement spatial, notamment à travers la mise en place de mobilier-oeuvres temporaires de glisse et de roule dans le cadre de la saison culturelle (Pointillard, 2020). Cet exemple rejoint la ligne de conduite du skate-urbanism, c'est-à-dire l'intégration de la pratique dans la définition de l'espace public ...
... Le second groupe est composé d'un seul auteur, Borden, qui pèse à lui seul près de 1 % des références citées par les papiers de la revue de littérature. Il s'affirme comme un auteur central pour le sujet, notamment du fait de son ouvrage incontournable(Borden, 2001) utilisé par plus d'un tiers des papiers du corpus. Il y traite en effet d'un questionnement similaire mais appliqué au skateboard, ce qui illustre l'influence importante des travaux réalisés sur cette pratique pour le développement des réflexions sur le parkour et la ville. ...
https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-03545164
Bien que jouer, se divertir ou flâner permettent de s'épanouir en ville, la place du récréatif n'y est pas si évidente. Offrir des espaces de récréation dans l'environnement urbain fait consensus mais l'idée que la ville soit en elle-même un territoire récréatif soulève des enjeux. Ce travail vise donc à étudier la construction, l'interrogation et la régulation de la ville récréative dans ses dimensions matérielle, sociale et politique. L'enquête s'intéresse au parkour et à l'urbex, deux pratiques de loisir transgressives liées au monde urbain. L'investigation repose sur des analyses bibliométriques pour la construction des orientations de la recherche, sur une immersion parmi les pratiquants de ces activités et sur des entretiens avec différents acteurs de la ville. La démarche est donc exploratoire et inductive, impliquant une certaine réflexivité. Au-delà des questions de dualités spatiales, de revendication, de transgression et de rapport à la ville, les principaux résultats s'articulent en trois niveaux : l'individu, le groupe humain et le territoire de la ville. Ils mettent en avant l'intérêt de tenir davantage compte de l'expérience récréative dans l'appréhension de la ville, de considérer la récréativité urbaine pour renouveler les compréhensions de l'espace urbain ainsi que de reconnaître et d'accepter le caractère diffus et inhérent du récréatif pour que la ville en bénéficie. En somme, ce travail invite à (re)donner une place à la récréation dans le temps et l'espace urbains.
... These included access, safety, lighting, management, physical connections to nearby communities, visual complexity, nature, noise and air pollution, use of the structure, and the openness of sites [4]. Also, in New York City, a project called "under the elevated" made a creative programmed to improve and manage the space under elevated highways [5]. Adding activities to these areas can raise property values, make it easier to get to stores and stores, stop people from using them informally, make them safer, and give communities long-term benefits [7]. ...
... Furthermore, Borden discusses the phenomenon of skating and other urban sports in abandoned places. In his research, skateboarders frequently transform the areas underneath elevated highways into bustling hotspots of youth culture and social interaction [5]. This repurposing reflects a wider movement in which unused urban areas are reclaimed and transformed by local groups. ...
The construction of urban highways within and around the city has resulted in a significant amount of residual spaces, which are rarely incorporated into official planning and design efforts. This literature review paper provides an overview of space underneath elevated highways delivered by urban leftover space: What types of leftover space have been discussed? Which underneath elevated highways have been identified in leftover space? 112 scientific papers were analyzed for their 1) leftover space terms applied, 2) space underneath elevated highways studied, 3) current or potential underneath elevated highways discussed. Through the review, we found that although different types of space have been identified in leftover space, most studies did not consider underneath elevated highways synergies and trade-offs. The literature review highlights two knowledge gaps for future research: Firstly, the existing research on residual space under urban viaducts has been exhaustive in terms of connecting with environmental attributes. Secondly, the content of the social interaction and use of the remaining space under the viaducts can be connected to the content of the environmental attributes. The existing gaps in the research indicate the importance of exploring the potential impacts aimed at utilizing leftover spaces. By highlighting the value of the environmental attributes of under-bridge spaces, the literature study promotes the recognition of the association of social interactions with the environmental attributes of under-bridge spaces and further outlines future research directions for the remaining under-bridge spaces in the urban design process.
... Borden, a first-wave British skater and professor of urban culture, and professional skater/urban historian Howell speak to their excitement of writing about a community they're heavily invested in. They just had to find the words and theories to articulate the kinds of critical thoughts and feelings they've had for years: Borden (2001) pushed the idea of skateboarding as a poetics; Howell (2001) traces its enmeshment with hostile architecture and security. Beal's experience was rather different. ...
... Beginning as a DIY activity by youth in the 1950s and 1960s, and coopted by surf culture in the 1970s, skateboarding became a decidedly urban activity in the 1980s (Borden 2001). It has since produced multi-millionaires like Yuto Horigome, Nyjah Huston, and Leticia Bufoni; mainstream conglomerates like Supreme, Polar, and Vans; and an athletic sport since its inclusion in the Olympic Games. ...
... Beginning as a DIY activity by youth in the 1950s, we find documentation of hill bombing that includes the pirate symbolism of the Jolly Roger drawn on hand-made skateboards, as well as police enforcement in the 1960s (The Devil's Toy, 1966). Soon co-opted by a rebel surf culture in the 1970s, skateboarding became its own "rebel" youth sub-culture in the 1980s (Borden, 2001) that continues to serve a deviant social function today. ...
... Even when idealized in children's stories like Peter Pan, piracy has a conflicting dark yet easy affect: 'To die will be an awfully big adventure.' Just as sea pirates were "pioneers of resistance to global capitalism" (Zar, 2022(Zar, : 1404, so too skateboarders assert, "a primacy of use over exchange" (Borden, 2001), defying the logic of capital in its very home, the city. Geckle and Shaw (2022) argue that skateboarding is a vehicle with transgressive content. ...
This paper seeks to analyze "skate crime:" what skateboarders do, why they do it, and why it is criminalized even in public spaces. I begin with a case example of the Dolores Street Hill Bomb in San Francisco, a seemingly over-criminalized annual event that treats skaters as enemies of the city, a logic of enmity. This same logic was used to criminalize 17th-18th century "Golden Age" maritime piracy, a heuristic that helps assess the role that stigmatization by dominant orders of authority plays in skate crime. I deepen this narrative of skate crime by discussing four diverse facets that distinguish whether they are caused by political motivations or not and whether they have effects of social harm or not. I argue further that Golden Age piracy also fits this four-fold narrative, leading to my conclusion that skateboarding might be considered a kind of piracy, a "street piracy."
... In 1981, Fausto Vitello founded Thrasher Magazine in San Francisco, California (Todd, nd). According to Borden (2001), Thrasher offered a "complete guide to skateboard subculture including articles on rock music and junk food… as well as local scene material, reader photographs… interviews and manufacturers' advertisements" (p. 163). ...
... The brainchild of pro skaters Steve Berra and Eric Koston, The Berrics website launched in 2007, in the early days of Web 2.0 and participatory media. Like the early Thrasher internet boards (Borden, 2001), the Berrics predated Instagram and debuted on the heels of YouTube. This suggests that skaters are nothing if not technologically savvy, and that they are early adopters of digital technology for promotional purposes. ...
Alternative media enable marginalized people to voice their experiences, challenge dominant ideologies, and circumvent mainstream gatekeepers. Podcasts are an alternative medium that can be counterhegemonic, foregrounding such issues as antiracism, Indigeneity, LGBTQ rights, socialism, and workers’ perspectives. This article expands on alternative-media research by transporting it to the skateboarding subculture. I first depict the skateboard outlets Thrasher Magazine (1981) and The Berrics (2007) website as hegemonic and mainstream. By contrast, I depict podcasts The Bunt (2016) and Vent City (2019) as counterhegemonic and alternative. I then ask: To what degree do skate podcasts acknowledge professional skateboarders as workers? And: Do such shows allow skaters to express grievances with their industry? A discourse analysis of Thrasher and The Berrics demonstrates that they often mystify freelance work, class, and skaters’ working conditions. An analysis of The Bunt and Vent City suggests that podcasts offer unique and radical perspectives, though attention to working conditions is uneven. I find there may be too much overlap between the case studies for an alternative/mainstream distinction to be meaningful. Political currents within skateboarding are still promising, however, and digital media will be essential in making the subculture and industry more inclusive.
... For example, drawing on Lefebvre's triadic framework, Borden (2001) studies 'production' and 'reproduction' of space through the 'body-centred' practice of skateboarding. Emphasising that space is not only built on plans, blueprints, maps, concrete, bricks and mortar, Borden emphasises that it is also built on (bodily) practices, objects, ideas, imagination and experience of people occupying the space (Spencer 2003). ...
... Emphasising that space is not only built on plans, blueprints, maps, concrete, bricks and mortar, Borden emphasises that it is also built on (bodily) practices, objects, ideas, imagination and experience of people occupying the space (Spencer 2003). It is based on this emphasis that Borden (2001) demonstrates how skateboarders repurpose the built environment, which was designed into discrete functional spaces of work and commerce, functional paths, ramps and stairways, into an ad-hoc adventure playground seeking out adventure, opportunity and pleasure. ...
The built environment can have a major impact on people’s economic prospects, health and wellbeing, and affect their everyday lived experiences. Additionally, due to their high costs, construction investments, which shape the built environment, involve high opportunity costs for society. Following from an increasing awareness of these issues, social value has become a rapidly growing area of research and practice in the built environment, accompanied by policy interest. Despite its popularity, theoretical engagement with the concept of ‘social value’ has been very limited. Particularly, so far, the politics emerging from subjectivity of value(s) have been either ignored or mentioned in a broad-brushed manner. However, the politics need to be considered at the core of any debates relating to social value due to the tensions between different views involved in conceptualising/analysing, creating/implementing and realising/experiencing social value. To address this gap, this paper introduces three types of politics of social value: analytical politics, participatory politics and lived politics. By clarifying these types of politics that are key to any social value consideration in the built environment, this will allow a deeper and more democratic engagement with the concept of social value. Policy relevance Existing policies have so far framed Social value in the built environment as a ‘balancing’ act, where the public’s interests were advised to be taken into consideration in the development of the built environment. In line with this, social value has primarily been approached by researchers and practitioners as a managerial activity, instead of being seen as a transformational impulse to rethink the professions and businesses in the built environment. Thus, the current dominant framing and practices conceal the politics involved in conceptualising/analysing, creating/implementing and realising/experiencing social value in the built environment. The introduction of three types of politics of social value in the built environment can enable improved policy-making. This new basis will explicitly consider the different types of politics involved with social value in the built environment. This will allow for a more democratic development of social value in the built environment.
... Elements of skate culture, such as clothes and shoes, permeate widely into youth culture as a recognizable style. A majority of boys are likely to have tried skateboarding, and the skate scene's image as alternative, easy going, and cool (Borden, 2001) make it an attractive bankstreet.edu/op teenage subculture. ...
... teenage subculture. Note that that image may be more apparent than real: the skate scene supports a substantial corporate industry, and the core aspects of skate culture-physical prowess and risk taking-make it in many ways a traditional arena for young men, from which girls are excluded (Borden, 2001. Freerunning and parkour arrived in North East England and in the UK in general more recently. ...
... Davon, dass Publikationen in teilweise hochrangingen Fachzeitschriften möglich sind, zeugt eine Vielzahl an Journalbeiträgen auf Englisch, Spanisch oder Französisch, was angesichts der aufgezeigten Bandbreite und Aktualität auch wenig verwundert. 2 Zudem finden sich insbesondere im englischsprachigen Raum eine Vielzahl an Monographien auf unterschiedlichen Qualifikationsstufen (u.a. Atencio et al., 2018;Beal, 2013;Borden, 2001Borden, , 2019Butz, 2012;Friedel, 2015;Vivoni, 2009;Willing & Pappalardo, 2023;Yochim, 2010) sowie drei Sammelbänden (Butz & Peters, 2018;Kilberth & Schwier, 2019;Lombard, 2016), von denen einer auch in deutscher Sprache vorliegt (Schwier & Kilberth, 2018). Vor dem Hintergrund der zahlreichen Publikationen und insbesondere der letzten Publikationsform (vier Sammelbände) muss sich der vorliegende Band die Frage gefallen lassen, ob ein weiterer deutschsprachiger Sammelband nötig ist und, wenn ja, warum? ...
Der Rahmentext dient der Verortung des Skateboarding in der bisherigen Wissenschaftslandschaft . Hierfür wird die bewegungskulturelle Praxis in ihrem relativ statischen Wesenskern als theoretischen Ausgangspunkt, aber auch anhand anhaltender Entwicklungen und Ausdifferenzierungen, als Anlass für weiterführende Forschung und Aktualisierungen, skizziert. Das Forschungsfeld offenbart ein besonders breites Spektrum an Wissenschaftsdisziplinen, u. a. Kulturwissenschaft, Soziologie, Geschichte, Psychologie, Pädagogik, Medizin und Trainingswissenschaft.
... Street skateboarding is a leisure activity that includes the temporary appropriation of often neglected architectural features designed for domestic or commercial uses, from downhill streets to backyard swimming pools to streetside handrails (Borden, 2001). These acts are theorised as prefigurative -a form of restorative socio-spatial occupation for the commons (O'Connor, 2016a): skateboarders reappropriate private spaces for all, returning parts of the city to 'the commons'. ...
... And yet, it took until 1962 before anyone talked about "having a stance," with the first written record of a surfer being "goofy-footed" (Muirhead 1962). Remarkably, this was only five years after commercial skateboards were being produced (Borden 2001a), the moment skateboarding "broke out of the realm of casual play" (Davidson 1976: 14). ...
This book presents a new perspective on skateboarding, centered on the senses, skill acquisition, embodiment, and the concept of "city craft." Skateboarding and the Senses traces how skaters use their skilled bodies to bring vitality to contested spaces. Building on sensory anthropology, the book draws connections between the diverse ways skaters move and their boundless drive for social action-from rebellious interventionism to a critical engagement with sportification and the Olympics. Coalescing around skate-boarding's pedagogy of enskilment, the book examines what to make of the skater's way of sensing the city, of their bruised heels and scabbed elbows, and of their sensory attunement to their friends and foes. Grounded in historical , anthropological, and phenomenological theories of body and space, it examines how skaters acquire somatic knowledge and socio-emotional resilience through their sonic and vibratory experience of the city streets. This sensory anthropology of skateboarding reveals new insights into its long arc of subculture, lifestyle, and sport. This is essential reading for anybody with an interest in the sociology, culture or history of sport, urban geographies, sensory studies, or social and cultural anthropology.
... Skaters reappropriate the property of others for ludic and creative purposes, subverting its intended use-case (Borden 2001). For this reason, skateboarding is often portrayed as a deviant type of leisure, constructing an altersociality of urban infrastructure (cf. ...
... In his Fukushima case study Evers (2019b) notes that some surfers purchase Geiger counters to make these 'resigned activist' accommodations. In a contrasting example Borden's (2001) work on skateboarding identifies that skateboarders use space in a resistant manner, albeit that this political act is ultimately hedonistic. ...
This paper explores the transformation of murals at San Diego’s Chicano Park Skatepark into sites of spiritual struggle. We observe the extension of spiritual identification through skateboarding as a leisure pursuit that is woven with the symbols of Chicano identity. We frame our discussion through the material and symbolic paradigm of pol- luted leisure, since the park is both contaminated by heavy industry and othered through its ethnic composition. Embedded in this narra- tive is the struggle over a people encased in a polluted space, and framed alike pollution as unwanted, disposable, and unsightly. Amidst this example of a fraying society afflicted with both the slow violence of substance abuse and internal gentrification, a spiritual connection to skateboarding offers coherence. We conclude by showing how the spirituality of skateboarding works as a recasting of polluted leisure as both a resistant and hopeful act.
... Throughout the course, students participated in group critiques, writing workshops, theory seminars, invited lectures, presentations, and desk critiques to refine their understanding and representations of radical cities (Kvan, 2001;Pallasmaa, 2009). They submitted posters visualizing their selected radical cities using their preferred visualization methods and crafted short manifestos to support their visual presentations (Borden, 2001;Fraser, 2019). By engaging in visual narratives and digital storytelling, students connected with the complexities of urban activism and radical cities, fostering a deeper understanding of these issues through collaborative and imaginative approaches (Robin, 2008). ...
Cities have consistently served as fertile grounds for the emergence and growth of radical ideas, political transformations, and social movements, with urban landscapes nurturing visionary concepts, idealism, and revolutionary ideologies. This research delves into the captivating world of radical cities, exploring the power of image and visual narratives to communicate and comprehend urban activism within diverse contexts. By analyzing various case studies and student works, we aim to create, study, and reimagine vivid portrayals of urban activism, radical urbanism, and future socio-spatial developments. The focus lies on developing innovative visual modalities and collaborative critical pedagogical approaches that engage with the complexities of radical cities across North America, Latin America, Asia, Europe, and beyond. In this study, we explore the potential of image and visual narratives to decode and understand pivotal societal transitions in radical cities. By employing imaginative and critical pedagogy, we aspire to foster a more profound comprehension of urban activism and its impact on shaping the cities of the future.
... Similarly, analogous forms of visual performance have been analyzed for other alternative sports (e.g. Borden 2001;Gugutzer 2004:225;Woermann 2012). As a practice, PK vision includes projecting oneself out into the world to "test" what it can afford, learning from the recorded performances and their assessment, and connecting to the global parkour mediascape to observe or even imitate what others are doing or trying elsewhere. ...
... However, not everyone is an artist or can pretend to be like, fortunately there are other ranges of more accessible activities, which can help to sensually transform the notion of urban creativity. In this respect, researchers point on variety of playful, somatic activities grouped under the umbrella of so called "lifestyle sports" (Borden, 2003;Gilchrist & Wheaton, 2011;Wheaton, 2004Wheaton, , 2013. Skateboarding, parkour, freeruning, urban freeriding and many others, are activities of which, each one have its own specificity, but all of them share the common denominator: cultivation of movement, through practice of locomotion of bodies (Petri op. ...
Urban creativity tends to be defined as a driving force of the ongoing changes in modern cities. While being a formally neutral term, the “creative,” in practice usually identifies all “good” sides of processes of urban transformations, especially those concerning the rise of spaces for sensual experiencing. The Creative City makes then a certain promise of aesthetic inclusion, enhanced participation, and autonomy for its citizens and visitors. However, the Creative City itself is neither an autonomous concept, nor the self-sufficient urban entity, but is entangled in economic, organizational, and social aspects of urban performance. All this makes us ask, is its promise trustworthy or rather empty?
... The majority of sociological work on skateboarding addresses the connections between space and urban appropriation (cf. Borden, 2001), with numerous ethnographically-based research projects reconstructing the inner perspectives of field participants (cf. Nowodworski, 2019, p. 12 ff.). ...
That which we consider to be real we call knowledge. As a rule, we consider what our five senses convey to us to be real. Our perception and what we consider real and construct as socially effective differs depending on which senses we focus on and how intensively.
The connection between reality constructions and sensory conditions has received little attention in social research so far. This concerns, for example, the use of our sensory organs for empirical reconstructions of bodies of knowledge, sensory perceptions as part of bodies of knowledge, or the question of how far knowledge is dependent on sensory abilities. This anthology attempts to close this gap by focusing on the social significance of sensory perceptions and discussing it using the example of various objects of investigation.
This book is a translation of an original German edition. The translation was done with the help of artificial intelligence (machine translation by the service DeepL.com). A subsequent human revision was done primarily in terms of content, so that the book will read stylistically differently from a conventional translation.
... The majority of sociological work on skateboarding addresses the connections between space and urban appropriation (cf. Borden, 2001), with numerous ethnographically-based research projects reconstructing the inner perspectives of field participants (cf. Nowodworski, 2019, p. 12 ff.). ...
Cultural Turns are certainly in vogue. They are not without controversy, but they do fulfil important filter functions in the accelerated academic world. This article traces the logic of cultural turns and discusses their use. The contours, directions and horizons of a Sensorial Turn and thus the questions of the chances, limits, potentials and challenges of a stronger consideration of sensory qualities of experience in the analysis of social phenomena will be discussed.KeywordsCultural turnSensorial turnSensesSensory perceptionSensory researchMethod development
... After all, as a sport, its praxis relies on challenges imposed on the body. Furthermore, the understanding of the body within parkour has followed the model of other subcultural or alternative sports, such as skateboarding, windsurfing or skating (see Borden 2001;Gugutzer 2004;Le Breton 2000;Wheaton 2007;. From there on, the research available concentrates mostly on the symbolic aspects of the body, its interactions and its dialectics with the environment, leaving behind how this symbolizations came to be or how it even functions sometimes beneath the representation/non-representation divide, and instead through implicit tensions, articulations of its own and other related evocations. ...
... Einen detaillierten Überblick über die historische Entwicklung des Skateboardings gebenBorden (2001Borden ( , 2019 und Schäfer (2020a). ...
Die kontroverse Diskussion um den Leistungsbegriff spielt in der heutigen Gesellschaft eine besondere Rolle und wird auch im Bereich von Leistungs- und Schulsport, als wesentliches Bedeutungskriterium des Sports an sich, ambivalent gesehen. Besonders der Schulsport muss sich in dieser Diskussion immer wieder selbst legitimieren und das Einfordern von Leistung rechtfertigen, hier nimmt das Argument der normativen Legitimation körperlicher Leistung neben dem Aspekt der Gesundheitserziehung eine herausragende Stellung ein. Aus der Sportpsychologie im Leistungssport lässt sich u. E. einiges an innovativen Ideen entwickeln. Sie setzt sich intensiv mit dem Phänomen Leistung auseinander. Besondere Beachtung kommt dabei den bestimmenden Leistungsbedingungen im Prozess der Leistungserbringung zu. Ausgehend von dem daraus entwickelten Modell (Lobinger, B. & Stoll, O. 2019), versucht die Sportpsychologie Leistung zu beschreiben, zu erklären, vorherzusagen und zu optimieren. In diesem Beitrag wird der Versuch unternommen, dieses Modell auf den Schulsport zu übertragen. Bleiben die Grundstrukturen mit Leistungsvoraussetzungen, Leistungsvollzug und Leistungsbewertung bestehen, erhalten sie zum Teil inhaltliche Erweiterungen. Dies wird an Beispielen aus dem Schulalltag deutlich gemacht.
... Einen detaillierten Überblick über die historische Entwicklung des Skateboardings gebenBorden (2001) und Schäfer (2020a. ...
... Similarly, skateboarders are drawn in by the 'trickability' of kerbs and other micromaterialities of the street such as gutters, steps and handrails (Borden, 2001;Woolley & Johns, 2001), 'dwelling with' the space (Pyyry & Tani, 2019). However, kerbs are contested spaces for skateboarders too, as a range of practices including policing, byelaws and design seek to control and limit skateboarders' use of public space, which is seen as potentially anti-social and damaging to the urban fabric (Woolley et al., 2011). ...
A dominant narrative around the impact of COVID-19 on children focuses on the risk of children being the pandemic's biggest victims. Without denying the severity of such damage, this article explores two examples of playing during the pandemic, alongside more affirmative Deleuzian accounts of desire, which can contribute to mitigating both the damage itself and what damage narratives perform. Using two fragments of data from research into children’s play during the first COVID-19 UK lockdown, we show how, despite the tightest of restrictions, moments of playfulness emerged from encounters between children, other bodies and the materiality and affective atmospheres of the street to produce moments of being well. In both fragments children play with the kerbs on the street, deterritorialising the curbs of both striated street spaces and lockdown in ways that temporarily enact a playful politics of space and produce moments of being well. We read these fragments through contemporary Deleuzian accounts of desire as a productive force. In so doing, we contribute to debates in relational ontologies of children’s geographies that address the micropolitics of children’s spatial practices.
... The best acts of liberation are unnoticed by the public, and these have the strongest chance of keeping spots alive for longer. Skateboarding challenges the prescribed use of objects and space, yet reinterpretation of the existing built form is crucial (Borden 2001). Like in Volont's (2019: 258) work on Spanish DIY collectives, the removal of skate-stoppers can be seen as producing an "urban commons" whereby the rewards are shared throughout the local skateboarding community. ...
Skate-stoppers are ubiquitous objects installed on outdoor surfaces in built environments all over the world. Skate-stoppers are an essential part of low-tech security of urban surfaces at a micro-scale—a single bench, handrail, or ledge—with the sole-purpose of protecting these surfaces from skateboarders. As such skate-stoppers are an extension of human and electronic surveillance systems, though in many patches of the urban landscape, skate-stoppers are a low-cost substitute for more sophisticated technologies. This interplay of control and liberation draws attention to surfaces in urban space and specific tactics adopted to secure and protect them through surveillance. In this article, we explore the criticality of skate-stoppers and tactics for removing them to advance the study of surveillance of small spaces. We argue that skate-stoppers are aggressive attempts to control urban space by interrupting the flow of bodies and boards along particular surfaces, namely the “spots” desired by skateboarders. Second, we argue that the installation of skate-stoppers has shifted from reaction to anticipation of skateboarders, and new construction projects now come with skate-stoppers already installed as part of surveillance infrastructure. Third, we argue that skateboarders have become adept at liberating spots from skate-stoppers, restoring flow to surfaces through both organised activism and covert acts, underscoring the limitations of surveillance using objects. We conclude with some thoughts on the disjuncture between the embrace of creative cities and the proliferation of skate-stoppers, suggesting creative play and its desired affective properties are regulated by the control of surfaces in the same spaces.
... In contrast to this, curriculum-based environmental education has the competing goal for the natural environment to also afford opportunities for young people to learn, yet is dependent upon the value that young people place on learning during environmental education, as young people attach their own values and knowledge upon spaces and places and their affordances (Borden, 2001;King & Church, 2013;Robinson, 2009;). As highlighted earlier, pedagogical wellbeing in educational settings is an important part of the learners' overall wellbeing with a key characteristic being that it is developed in the everyday practices of schooling (Pyhalto et al., 2010). ...
This thesis explores the role that curriculum-based environmental education plays in influencing young peoples' wellbeing. It adopts a social constructivist approach to understand how wellbeing is understood, articulated and experienced by young people in residential learning environments. The thesis argues that positivistic and adult-centred accounts of wellbeing have restricted our appreciation of the diverse ways in which young people engage with and recognise their emotions in educational settings. In adopting an alternative framework, the thesis argues for experiential and subjective understandings of wellbeing to be developed through a range of methodological tools. The research sought to develop these ideas by focusing on the experiences of students visiting the Field Studies Centre at Slapton Ley (Devon, UK) and utilised focus groups and solicited participant diaries, providing a basis for phenomenological inquiry that enabled a direct engagement with young people participating in environmental education programmes. The empirical research focused on the experiences of young people between the ages of 14 and 18 years on a residential, curriculum-based environmental education programme and examined the role and potential of environmental education for supporting the wellbeing of young people. From an initial thematic analysis of the data five elements were identified as key to the participants' wellbeing: wellbeing as multidimensional, social elements, psychological elements, physical health and environmental elements. These elements were then used to provide a framing for understanding young peoples' experiences of wellbeing throughout the lived experience of curriculum-based environmental education and, as a result, the research yielded three themes that provide an understanding of the key experiences of environmental education and its connection to wellbeing: experiences of place, experiences of people, and the learning experience. Using these themes and the participants' conceptualisations of wellbeing, the research then iii explored how strategies can be developed within environmental education to promote the wellbeing of young people and reveals the importance of fostering feelings of restoration, increasing social bonds and developing a sense of achievement and accomplishment. Consequently, this research contributes to the fields of environmental education and health and wellbeing research within a geographical context through demonstrating the importance of qualitative approaches in revealing the ways young people articulate their emotions in educational settings. Alongside this, it challenges assumptions about the way nature is utilised in wellbeing interventions, highlighting the role that social and cultural backgrounds can play in the way nature is experienced by different groups and how this can be addressed within environmental education. Therefore, a key contribution of this research is in providing an empirical analysis for the relationship between environmental education and wellbeing, and how to best design environmental education programmes that meet the needs of young people.
This paper examines the city of Steelport in Saints Row: The Third (Volition, 2011) as a real-and-imagined space that can be described using an urban framework of constitutional, representational, and experiential components. It relates mediated and physical cities through spatial arrangement, processes of representation, and the factors that contribute to a sense of place in both material and immaterial worlds.
Art as it occurs in the streets is an “other” history. Inherently anti-institutional, it has never fit well within the academy or the museum; basically free, it has consistently had a problematic relationship with the art market; iconoclastic, it is often hard for many to read; and stemming from the countercultural or underground tendencies of youth, it is by and large all too easy for those who “know better” to dismiss it without regard to its content or its intent. Carlo McCormick, “Art in The Streets”
Skateboarding is a practice that reimagines and repurposes the urban landscape by manipulating its designs for unintended purposes and creating new relationships with space. In this way, skateboarding may challenge the exclusionary urban logics in colonized cities. Extending this line of thought, I explore the decolonizing and indigenizing potential of skateboarding through the concepts of visual sovereignty and placemaking. I suggest skateboarding diversifies and contemporizes indigenous arts and practices, translates indigeneity into urban contexts that traditionally preclude indigenous peoples and cultures, builds communities between indigenous groups and across rural and urban geographies, and imagines other ways of being, doing, and relating to space that signals more indigenous futures.
Bu çalışmada, Coğrafi Bilgi Sistemi ve Çok Kriterli Karar Verme yöntemleri kullanılarak kaykay parkı yer seçimi süreci incelenmektedir. Çalışma kapsamında, Bolu ili örneği üzerinden Coğrafi Bilgi Sistemi yardımıyla yedi adet alternatif yer; belediye yöneticileri ve kaykay kullanıcılarından oluşan uzman ekip görüşüne başvurularak da kaykay parkında olması elzem olan yedi adet kriter belirlenmiştir. Uzman görüşlerinden elde edilen veriler, CRITIC ve ARAS yöntemleri ile analiz edilmiştir. Araştırmanın sonuçları, kaykay parkı yer seçiminde en etkili kriterlerin başında “diğer parklarla entegre olması” ve “alan büyüklüğü” geldiğini ortaya koymuştur. Diğer yandan, “ulaşım kolaylığı”, en az öneme sahip kriter olarak belirlenmiş; bu kriterler doğrultusunda en uygun alternatifin “Orman Parkı” olduğu ortaya çıkmıştır. Bu bulgular, benzer projelerin tasarımına ve yer seçimine rehberlik ederek, kaykay parklarıyla ilgili şehir planlaması ve spor tesisleri yönetimi alanlarında önemli bir kaynak sağlayabilir.
This piece looks at a Floridian touristic surf town named Cocoa Beach to investigate the role of music in urban space appropriation. This relatively new town, established in 1925, has built its socio-cultural heritage and thriving tourism industry on a singular surf lifestyle anchored in the United State’s Southern culture and the Caribbean. The town has enabled the conveyance of the surf lifestyle by allowing representational and inclusive aesthetic dynamics to strive through local enterprise. Among the many instances that illustrate this point, we look at how a Cocoa Beach-based sunscreen company named Sun Bum has dedicated its space to musical performances to promote a local surf lifestyle associated with the surf town. While acknowledging the historical heritage of Californian surf music, Cocoa Beach surfers have developed a musical scene that reflects their laid-back approach to surfing and allows them to define their local community in a global surf culture collectively. As a result, imported and local musics are integrated into the feel of the town and are used as a platform that contributes to marking local identities and economies by promoting a singular “surfanization.”
Sun Bum’s office space usage as a stage is a way to relocalize surf music: it is displaced, branded, and displayed as a Cocoa Beach surf lifestyle and identity. Local surfers see it as validating their singular identity while tourists associate these musical events with the surf town. Infrastructures developed by aesthetic, social, and geographic communities have enabled the growth of a subculture inherited, commodified, and reorganized according to local codes. The process allows the activation of know-hows and clarifies the space-music-activity relationship and the interconnectedness of the global and the local.
Via an innovative reading of mountain biking, this Introduction Chapter outlines the importance of the collection. Following some important definitions, the reader is introduced to the notions of dominant, residual, and emergent structures of feeling, suggesting that these three modalities allow scholars and practitioners to move beyond static and essentialist readings of subculture. Subsequently, it highlights conflicts between mountain bikers and other users of outdoor space, and how these serve to highlight some of the most important issues of our catastrophic times. Finally, from their varying perspectives, each chapter in the collection is given a brief summary, with new insights offered on the significance of mountain bike culture in relation to identity, bodies, ecology and the cultural politics of lifestyle sports.
It seems almost superfluous to emphasize that when ethnographers immerse themselves in a field of research, they devote themselves to it holistically that is with all their senses. For the reconstruction of social meaning, it seems unavoidable in certain lifeworlds to also integrate the meaning of sensory perceptions into the analysis. Especially in body- and movement-oriented scenes, such as skateboarding, the research program of a sensual ethnography can be fruitful. In this paper, the senses relevant to skateboarding will be examined in terms of their significance for the experience of scene practice.KeywordsSensory ethnographySensory perceptionLifeworldSkateboarding
This chapter offers a brief history of skateboarding in the US, with its evolving social dynamics and key flashpoints of change through four main themes: (1) the California scene and the emergence of the skate industry, (2) from underground subculture to scene with market power, (3) expanding, transgressive and progressive horizons in skateboarding, and (4) further mainstreaming and a continuing culture of resistance. We discuss how skateboarding culture has moments of being progressive, but it can also be problematic and not necessarily on a linear journey to equity. Our overview also emphasizes that power dynamics in skateboarding are not always static and are open to being challenged and changed by those involved at all levels of skill, industry, and community involvement.KeywordsSkateboarding historySkate industryPower relationsNon-traditional skateboarders
Racial diversity has shaped skateboarding in the US and beyond. Scholarly attention to race and skateboarding, however, remains fixated with critiquing whiteness and consequently racial diversity is considered ethereal, subordinate, or exploited for profit. Rarely are skateboarders afforded the capacity for navigating complex racial dynamics or fluid racial identities. While wary of romanticising racial diversity in skateboarding, this article explores three possibilities for thinking about skateboarding and race drawn from media made for consumption within skate culture, video in this case. First, racial diversity is integral to skate culture in its heartlands and around the world. Second, skateboarding appeals to racially diverse participants, offering ways of being and belonging outside of families, communities, and institutions. Third, skateboarding, as a sport and culture, is overlooked as site for alternative stories about race, racism, and racial diversity both challenging and affirming broader socio-cultural experiences and narratives in time and place.
Le cyberpunk est mort en 1995, ont jadis affirmé Arthur et Marilouise Kroker, soit le jour où le film Johnny Mnemonic est sorti au cinéma. Pour eux, l’échec de cette œuvre s’explique moins par des raisons esthétiques que par l’avènement de changements culturels rapides, alors que les métaphores cyberpunk des années 1980 ne fonctionnent plus dans les années 1990. Il est vrai qu’à partir de cette époque, le numérique a pénétré toutes les facettes de notre quotidien et le fait de naviguer dans les espaces numériques est devenu une activité banale. Toutefois, la culture contemporaine n’en a pas terminé avec le cyberpunk. En la matière, les fictions produites au cours de la décennie 2010 témoignent d’un intérêt renouvelé pour ses considérations sur l’avènement d’une posthumanité, sur l’intelligence artificielle, sur le caractère vertigineux de la vie au sein de mégapoles hyper-trophiées et sur les espaces numériques. Elles témoignent également d’un bougé dans la représentation de la société contemporaine, et plus particulièrement, car c’est le sujet de cet ouvrage, dans la représentation et la simulation du milieu urbain contemporain et de son habiter. Ce sont là des signes suggérant qu’au cours de ses quatre décennies d’existence, le cyberpunk a enregistré et continue d’enregistrer en la matière des mutations dignes d’être étudiées. Cela implique la mise en texte d’une expérience du milieu urbain contemporain et de son habiter propre, qu’il s’agit de mettre au jour et que le cyberpunk, en prise sur notre époque, exacerbe pour en montrer les aspects délétères et les potentialités — désirables ou souhaitables — non exploitées.
En sus d’une verticalisation et d’un étalement croissants, les villes telles que les fictions cyberpunk nous les donnent à voir, à lire ou à jouer sont devenues, avec le passage du temps, « intelligentes ». Les technologies assurant à leurs habitants confort et sécurité se sont multipliées pour donner lieu à des « technococons », pour reprendre un néologisme d’Alain Damasio. Mais ces mêmes villes, à travers le filtre de la fiction et en fonction d’une demande croissante de prévisibilité et d’une tolérance toujours plus faible de la société face à l’incertitude, ont vu se multiplier en leur sein des dispositifs de surveillance et de prédiction emblématisés aujourd’hui davantage par les drones, les capteurs biométriques, les Big data et les traceurs que par les tours panoptiques, les caméras et les microphones miniaturisés d’autrefois, donnant lieu, dans l’exercice, à des formes de ségrégation sociospatiale et à un morcellement de l’espace public au profit d’une architecture de forteresse physique et numérique. À cette ségrégation, fruit d’une obsession sécuritaire, répond en contrepartie une autre obsession pour la vitesse et la libre circulation des biens, des personnes et de l’information, cette fois, que la ville — nœud dans un réseau économique tissé à l’échelle mondiale —, délaissant la logique des lieux en faveur d’une logique des flux, surveille et régule à l’aide d’outils nés de la cybernétique.
C’est à ces mutations du milieu et de l’habiter urbains vues au prisme du cyberpunk de la décennie 2010 que se consacre cet ouvrage dans une perspective mésocritique. Il s’agit de brosser le portrait de Cybernanthropolis, ce pendant science-fictionnel de nos villes contemporaines.
As a 52-year-old academic and mother of three, this research explores the ethics of the question ‘do I have time to go skateboarding?’ Using the themes of time, injury, ageing and learning, it explores the question in relation to Simone de Beauvoir’s ethics of ambiguity. The approach employs autoethnographic and sensory methods to document the authors own experience of learning to skateboard in her late forties and uses learning to skateboard as a vehicle from which to consider time and productivity. Embracing Beauvoir’s ethics of transcendence in navigating the psychological burden of ageing and informing the ongoing methodological approach required for making time to play, the author subverts ideas of progression and knowledge acquisition from childhood to adulthood and explores instead the converse transition from adult to child. The article draws conclusions about the value of lifelong learning and what expanded ideas about productivity mean for our ethical positioning in the world. How being in the skatepark together requires an ethical contract between skateboarders, an unambiguous ethics of being together where adhering to a system of unwritten rules means that everyone has enough space to stay safe. Risk and the time implications of injury are explored throughout in terms of the choices we make at different stages of our lives as we navigate a balance between personal desire and social good.
Skateboarding is a popular form of active transportation and recreation that reinterprets the use of public obstacles like stairs, rails, and planters for play. Through active leisure, skateboarding provides physiological, social, and emotional benefits. However, cities regulate and design out the activity through legal and architectural interventions, citing injury liability, property damage, and nuisance as justifications. In this paper, we focus on the impacts of hostile architecture and urban design in restricting skateboarding, and thus reducing opportunities to engage in cardiovascular exercise. While hostile designs target populations like unhoused people from using public space, there is little evidence of their effects on skateboarding in universities. Therefore, this paper comparatively analyses the extent of hostile designs and their impacts on skateboarding as a novel form of physical activity in three public universities in Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Comparing photographs and autoethnographic accounts, we argue campuses disproportionately target skateboarding for exclusion. We find that exclusion is legitimized through temporary events and safety and damage concerns. Given the health benefits of skateboarding, we recommend skate-friendly interventions that address these concerns, create shared campus space, and reimagine universities as inclusive places for all modes of active transportation and recreation. ARTICLE HISTORY
COVID-19 ruptured mobilities within and between cities during 2020–2022. Empty urban landscapes came to define experiences, representations, and memories of lockdowns and ensuing periods of recovery. However, empty cities provided opportunities for play and exploration in subcultures like skateboarding. Skateboarders, among other groups, took advantage of relative emptiness to access known skate spots and to discover new spots, charting new cartographies of urban landscapes in the process. Performances at these spots were captured and circulated through skateboard media, especially video. Skateboarding footage captured in empty cities acts as a radical archive of alternative mobilities during the pandemic, unsettling dominant tropes of immobility. By analyzing a preeminent skate video shot in Sydney during the pandemic, this article makes three points of argument. First, skate video archives shifting speeds and scales of mobility and immobility during the pandemic; as some mobilities halted, others accelerated. Second, confusing legal geographies, what was permitted and where, created new surveillance priorities and multiple surveillance glitches. Skateboarders took advantage and accessed patches of cities usually obstructed. Third, as cities try and regain their buzz, playful, unpredictable, and unregulated mobile performances with the power to enliven the streets deserve reconsideration, even if they defy control.
India’s urban infrastructure is maligned for its breakdowns, inefficiencies, and inequities, and popular resentment at dysfunctional infrastructure is constant in public life. This article focuses on the surprising desire for India’s urban infrastructure among skateboarders. Skateboarders are drawn to India’s urban infrastructure because of its dysfunction, its seemingly unfinished nature. I explore these relationships by analysing four skate videos and making three arguments. First, infrastructure attracts skateboarders for possibilities of creative interpretation and appropriation, on‐camera aesthetics, and the encounters generated between mostly foreign (though not always “western”) skaters and local urban dwellers. Second, far from isolated moments, the appropriation of India’s infrastructure is captured and circulated to an audience of millions in skateboard videos. Third, skate video presents urban India as a frontier in its subcultural geographic and cartographic imagination; although over two decades India’s cities have drifted closer to skateboarding’s core; concrete and steel replacing cows and festivals on screen. The article closes by exploring the implications for skateboarding—a subculture built on disrupting the city, hacking its infrastructure, moving against its flows—when operating in spaces where disruption is the essential condition of everyday life, and how this is transmitted to an adjacent viewing public. Skateboarders are drawn to India’s urban infrastructure because of its dysfunction. Specifically, India’s infrastructure offers possibilities for creative interpretation and appropriation, on‐camera aesthetics, and encounters between mostly foreign (though not always “western”) skaters and local urban dwellers. The appropriation of India’s infrastructure is captured and circulated to an audience of millions in skateboard video, presenting urban India as a frontier in its subcultural geographic and cartographic imagination.