Unit 13 · Skateboarding, the City and the World

Walk through a downtown plaza in almost any large city and look closely at the edges of the low walls. You may see small metal knobs, brackets or bumps bolted along the top every meter or so. These are skate stoppers. They break up a smooth edge so a skateboard truck or deck cannot slide along it.

Skate stoppers spread in the 1990s and 2000s, after street skating became the main way many people rode. Street skaters use the city as their terrain. A marble ledge, a handrail or a bench becomes a place to grind, which means scraping the metal trucks along an edge. A ledge is any long, flat-topped edge low enough to skate onto.

Building owners put in stoppers for several reasons. Grinding can chip stone and scrape paint. Skaters rub wax on ledges so boards slide more easily, and the wax leaves dark streaks. Owners also worry about noise, about people walking by, and about being blamed if someone is injured on their property. A stopper costs far less than replacing a damaged stone edge.

Skate stoppers belong to a larger family of city features. Planners and critics call this family hostile design, also known as defensive architecture. It means shaping a public object so that some people cannot use it in certain ways. The object still looks like a bench or a wall, but its shape quietly says no.

Common examples sit in plain sight. A bench may have armrests every half meter so no one can lie down. A ledge may slope so no one can sit. Spikes or rough stones may fill the space under a bridge. Bright lights or high-pitched sound devices may be aimed at places where teenagers gather.

People argue about these designs. Supporters say owners have a right to protect property and keep spaces clean and calm. Critics say the designs push away people who are already unwelcome elsewhere, such as unhoused people and young people with nowhere to go. They also note that a feature aimed at one group can make a space worse for everyone, such as an older person who needs a flat place to rest.

Skaters entered this debate because they are easy to see and hear. A public space is land or a place that anyone may enter, such as a sidewalk, park or plaza. When a city adds stoppers to a public plaza, it is choosing who that space is mainly for. Asking who decides, and why, is a central question in city planning.

Imagine a skater sliding along a ledge at 3 meters per second when the board hits a bolted knob. The board stops in a few centimeters. The skater’s body does not. It keeps moving forward at about 3 meters per second until the ground, a hand or a knee stops it. This is inertia: an object keeps its motion unless a force changes it.

Isaac Newton stated this as the first law of motion in his Principia in 1687. A skate stopper applies a large force to the board for a very short time. Nothing applies that force to the rider’s chest and head. That is why a hidden stopper is dangerous, and why skaters scout a spot before they ride it.

Wax works on the other side of the problem. When a board slides on a ledge, kinetic friction slows it. On a level edge the friction force is f = μN, where N is the board and rider’s weight, and the slowing is μg. The slide distance before stopping is v² ÷ (2μg). The coefficient of friction, μ, is a number that describes how grippy two surfaces are together.

Here is a worked example with v = 3 m/s and g = 9.8 m/s². On a bare edge with an example μ of 0.5, the distance is 9 ÷ (2 × 0.5 × 9.8) = 9 ÷ 9.8, about 0.92 m. With wax, suppose μ drops to 0.2. Then 9 ÷ (2 × 0.2 × 9.8) = 9 ÷ 3.92, about 2.3 m. Lower friction more than doubles the slide, which is why skaters wax and why owners see streaks.

On the south bank of the River Thames in central London stands a group of concrete arts buildings from the late 1960s, part of the Southbank Centre. Beneath one of them is a wide, covered, open-sided space with low banks, steps and pillars. This space is called the undercroft, an old word for a room or vault under a building.

Skaters found the undercroft in the 1970s. Its smooth concrete, its gentle slopes and its roof against London rain made it useful all year. It was never designed for skateboarding. Skaters adopted it, the way street skaters adopt any good surface. Over the decades BMX riders, graffiti writers and photographers made it their home too.

The undercroft’s buildings are an example of Brutalism, a style of architecture that leaves raw concrete exposed in large, blocky shapes. Many people disliked the style. Skaters, though, valued exactly what others found harsh: hard, smooth, durable surfaces. Generations of British skaters learned there, and visitors from around the world came to see it.

In 2013 the Southbank Centre announced plans to redevelop its buildings. The plans would have turned the undercroft into shops and restaurants. Skaters would have been offered a new space under a nearby bridge instead. The centre argued the new shops would help pay for repairs to the old buildings.

Skaters and supporters formed a campaign, an organized effort to win a goal. They called it Long Live Southbank. They argued that the undercroft’s value came from its history and the community built there, and that a new space could not simply replace it. They gathered petitions, filed objections to the planning application and spoke to the press and to local officials.

In 2014 the campaign and the Southbank Centre reached an agreement that the undercroft would stay where it was, for skating. The campaign later raised money to help restore parts of the space that had been closed off. Long Live Southbank showed that skaters could use the ordinary tools of civic life, such as petitions, planning objections and public meetings, to protect a place.

The case also raised a wider idea. Heritage usually means old buildings, monuments and art that a society chooses to protect. Southbank skaters argued that a living community and its way of using a place can be heritage too, even if the use was never planned.

Under the east end of the Burnside Bridge in Portland, Oregon, there was a patch of dirt and broken ground that few people used. In 1990 a group of local skaters started pouring concrete there. They bought bags of cement, mixed it, and shaped banks against the bridge’s walls. Nobody had given them permission.

The skaters kept building, a section at a time, using money they raised themselves. They also cleared trash and discouraged drug dealing in the area. Over time the city decided to accept the park instead of tearing it out. Burnside became one of the most famous skateparks in the world, known for steep, rough, hand-shaped concrete.

Building on land you do not own is trespassing, and it can lead to fines or removal. Burnside’s story worked out partly because the land was neglected, the skaters improved it, and neighbors and officials came to see the benefit. Many other skater-built spots have been torn down. Burnside is famous as an exception, not a guarantee.

Skaters use the letters DIY, for do-it-yourself, to describe spots they build with their own hands. A DIY spot might be one small concrete bank against a wall, a painted curb, or a whole park like Burnside. The idea goes back to the 1970s, when skaters drained backyard pools and built wooden ramps in driveways.

DIY spots tend to grow where public parks are missing or far away. They also reflect taste. Skaters who build their own terrain can make it steeper, rougher or stranger than a city would. Many DIY builders later used what they learned to start companies that design and build public skateparks.

Building with concrete is real construction work. Wet cement can burn skin, so builders wear gloves, long sleeves and eye protection. Bags of cement are heavy, and a poorly shaped transition can throw a rider. The safest way for a young skater to take part is to join a group that has permission from the landowner, works with experienced builders and adults, and follows local rules.

A legal path also exists. Some cities now let skaters help design or even build public parks with official approval. This keeps the creativity of DIY while removing the risk that the spot will be bulldozed a month later. It also means the city inspects the work and can take care of the park for years.

Tony Hawk, the skater famous for landing the first 900 at the 1999 X Games, started the Tony Hawk Foundation in 2002. Its goal was to help communities build free, public skateparks, especially in places with few resources. A public skatepark is one owned by a city or park district and open to anyone, usually without a fee.

The foundation gave grants, which are gifts of money for a specific project that do not have to be paid back. Just as important, it gave advice. Many city officials had never planned a skatepark. The foundation shared guidance on choosing a site, involving local skaters, picking an experienced designer and building with long-lasting concrete.

In 2020 the organization changed its name to The Skatepark Project. The new name put the focus on the parks and the communities rather than on one famous person. Over its history it has helped fund many hundreds of parks across the United States. Its work shows a shift from skaters fighting cities to skaters working with them.

People who want a skatepark usually make four kinds of arguments. The first is safety. A park gives skaters smooth ground away from cars, which removes one of the most serious dangers of riding in streets and parking lots. The second is fairness. Cities already build ball fields, courts and pools; supporters argue that skaters deserve space too.

The third argument is health and belonging. Skating is exercise, and it does not need a team, a coach, a schedule or a fee. A teenager who did not fit into team sports can find a group at the park. Older skaters often teach younger ones, so a park can work like an informal classroom.

The fourth argument is about the rest of the city. A good park gives skaters a better place to ride than a courthouse ledge or a store’s planters. Business owners who complain about skaters often become supporters once skaters have somewhere else to go. Supporters use the word stakeholder for anyone with something to gain or lose from a decision, and they try to show that a park helps several stakeholders at once.

Not everyone wants a skatepark nearby. Neighbors worry about noise from wheels and boards slapping concrete, especially in the evening. Officials worry about cost, since a well-built concrete park is a real construction project. Some worry about liability, which is legal responsibility if someone gets hurt. Several U.S. states have passed laws that limit a city’s liability for injuries at public skateparks, and that has made parks easier to approve.

Street skating raises sharper concerns. Skaters can chip ledges, scratch rails and leave wax on stone. Pedestrians may feel unsafe when boards move quickly past them. Skating on private property without permission is trespassing. Many cities ban skating on certain sidewalks or plazas, and police may issue tickets.

Skaters argue among themselves too. Some say parks are a gift that keeps riders safe. Others say a park can become a fence: once it exists, a city may feel free to ban skating everywhere else. Street skaters value the challenge of real architecture, and some of the most creative tricks in skating’s history were done on ordinary city objects.

A middle path has grown since the 2000s. Some cities now build skate plazas, which look like ordinary public plazas with ledges, steps and benches but are made to be skated. Other cities mark a few downtown spots where skating is allowed. These ideas treat skaters as one group of users sharing a space, rather than a problem to remove.

Many public skateparks began with a few skaters and a notebook. The first step is to learn who decides. In most towns that means a park district board or a city council, and their meetings are open to the public. Their agendas, the published lists of what will be discussed, show when public comment is allowed.

Next, gather evidence. Skaters can map where people ride now, count riders at popular spots on a few afternoons, and collect signatures from residents. A petition is a written request signed by many people. Letters from parents, teachers and business owners show that support goes beyond skaters themselves.

Then propose a site and answer concerns. A good site is visible, close to public transportation, near restrooms and away from homes that would hear the noise. Speakers should be ready for questions about cost, safety and upkeep. Groups such as The Skatepark Project publish guidance that local skaters can bring to officials.

Finally, expect a long process. Parks often take several years from the first meeting to the opening day. Skaters who keep attending, stay respectful and help with fundraising or design workshops build trust. That trust is often what turns a no into a yes.

Oliver Percovich, a skater from Australia, arrived in Kabul, Afghanistan, in 2007 with a few skateboards. When he rode in the streets, children crowded around and asked to try. Many of them worked on the streets selling goods and did not go to school. Percovich noticed that girls were joining in as well.

In 2007 he founded Skateistan, a nonprofit organization. A nonprofit is a group that uses any money it raises for its mission rather than paying owners. Skateistan’s idea was simple. Skateboarding would be the hook. Children who came to skate would also join classes in reading, art and other subjects, and some would be helped back into regular school.

Skateistan built an indoor skatepark in Kabul so that girls could skate in a space where families felt comfortable sending them. Girls made up a large share of its students. At the time, few sports were open to girls in Afghanistan, and skateboarding was so new that no one had yet decided it was only for boys.

Skateistan grew beyond Kabul. It opened programs in other Afghan cities and later in Cambodia and South Africa, following the same pattern of skating plus education. Each program hired local staff, and many former students became coaches and teachers themselves. This model, where people who learned in a program go on to lead it, helps a project last.

In 2020 a short documentary about Skateistan’s girls, Learning to Skateboard in a Warzone (If You’re a Girl), won the Academy Award for best documentary short. The film followed young students in Kabul as they learned to skate and to drop in on a ramp, and as they went to class. Its win brought the program to millions of new viewers.

In August 2021 the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan and placed strict limits on girls’ education. Skateistan had to change how it worked there, and many of its public programs could not continue as before. The story shows both the power of a simple idea and how much it depends on the world around it.

Skateistan is one of many programs worldwide that use skating for youth development, which means helping young people build skills, confidence and connections. Similar groups work in cities on several continents, often in places with few parks or youth programs.

The International Olympic Committee, or IOC, decides which sports appear at the Olympic Games. In 2016 it approved five new sports for the Tokyo 2020 Games: skateboarding, surfing, sport climbing, karate, and baseball and softball. The Tokyo organizers had proposed them, partly to draw younger viewers.

Each Olympic sport needs an international federation, a body that writes the rules and organizes qualifying events around the world. For skateboarding that body is World Skate, which also governs roller sports. Skaters earned their places through a ranking system based on contests held before the Games.

The COVID-19 pandemic pushed the Tokyo Games back by one year. They were held in the summer of 2021 but kept the name Tokyo 2020. Skateboarding took place at Ariake Urban Sports Park on the Tokyo waterfront. Because of the pandemic, spectators were not allowed, so most people watched on television and online.

Olympic skateboarding has four events: men’s and women’s street, and men’s and women’s park. In street, skaters ride a course built to look like a city plaza, with stairs, handrails, ledges, banks and curbs. The tricks are mostly ollies, flips, grinds and slides on these obstacles.

In park, skaters ride a bowl, a deep concrete basin with curved walls called transitions. The style grows from the empty swimming pools that skaters rode in California in the 1970s. Park riders pump to build speed, fly above the top edge, called the coping, and spin or grab the board in the air.

Each event has its own format. In general, street skaters take timed runs across the course and also try single tricks, one at a time, and only their best scores count. Park skaters take a few timed runs, and their best run counts. Formats have been adjusted between Games, but the idea of runs plus best scores has stayed.

These are skilled athletes at the top of the sport, riding at a skatepark built for the event. The stairs and handrails on a street course are for experts with years of training. New skaters build up on flat ground, small curbs and low ramps first, with a helmet and pads.

Skateboarding has no finish line or goal, so a panel of judges gives scores. They look at how hard each trick is, how cleanly it is done and landed, how high and fast the skater rides, how varied the tricks are, and how well a run flows from one trick to the next. A fall or a sketchy landing, where the skater wobbles or touches down, lowers the score.

Height is one thing the judges can see clearly, and it follows the physics of falling. Once a skater leaves the coping, gravity is the main force acting. The skater rises, slows, stops for an instant at the top and falls back. The air time, the total time off the ramp, for a jump that rises h meters above the coping is about 2√(2h/g).

Here is a worked example with g = 9.8 m/s². For an air 1.0 m above the coping: 2h/g = 2 × 1.0 ÷ 9.8, which is about 0.204. The square root of 0.204 is about 0.452. Doubling gives about 0.90 seconds. For 2.0 m: 2 × 2.0 ÷ 9.8 is about 0.408, its square root is about 0.639, and doubling gives about 1.28 seconds.

Notice that doubling the height does not double the air time. Air time grows with the square root of height. That extra time is what lets a park skater fit in a full spin or a long grab, which is why height and difficulty often go together on the judges’ sheets.

The men’s street final was the first Olympic skateboarding event ever held, in July 2021. Yuto Horigome of Japan won the gold medal. Horigome grew up in Tokyo, so he won the first skateboarding gold in his home city. He was known for technical tricks on rails and ledges, where the board must lock in precisely.

The women’s street final came the next day. Momiji Nishiya of Japan, thirteen years old, won gold. Rayssa Leal of Brazil, also thirteen, won silver. Funa Nakayama of Japan, sixteen, took bronze. It was one of the youngest podiums in Olympic history. Leal had become famous years earlier when a video of her as a small child, skating in a fairy costume, spread widely online, and Brazilians call her Fadinha, "little fairy."

The street results showed how far skating had spread. Japan and Brazil both have large, active skate scenes. A medalist is any athlete who wins a gold, silver or bronze medal. Street medalists in Tokyo came from Japan, Brazil and the United States, a mix that would have been hard to imagine when skating’s first contests were held in California in the 1960s.

The women’s park final put three teenagers on the podium again. Sakura Yosozumi of Japan, nineteen, won gold. Kokona Hiraki of Japan, twelve, won silver. Sky Brown of Great Britain, thirteen, won bronze. Brown was born in Japan to a Japanese mother and a British father and chose to compete for Great Britain.

Brown’s medal came after a serious training fall in 2020, when she came off a ramp and was badly hurt. She recovered in time to compete at the Games the next summer. Her story drew attention to how much risk park skaters face in the air, and to the role of helmets and careful progression even for experts.

In the men’s park final, Keegan Palmer of Australia won gold with high, fast runs through the bowl. Park rewards amplitude, the height a skater reaches above the coping, along with spins, grabs and flips done at that height. Pedro Barros of Brazil took silver, adding to Brazil’s medals in the sport.

For the Paris 2024 Games, skateboarding moved to the center of the city. The course was built at the Place de la Concorde, a famous square, alongside BMX freestyle and breaking. The setting matched skating’s roots in public plazas, though this plaza was fenced, ticketed and built for the event.

Two Tokyo champions won again. Yuto Horigome of Japan took men’s street gold, and Keegan Palmer of Australia took men’s park gold. Defending a title is hard in any sport, and in skating the tricks needed to win grow harder every year. A defending champion is the winner of the last contest who competes to win again.

New names won the women’s events. Coco Yoshizawa of Japan won women’s street gold, and Rayssa Leal of Brazil added a bronze to her Tokyo silver. Arisa Trew of Australia won women’s park gold. Sky Brown of Great Britain won bronze in park again. Skateboarding is on the program for the Los Angeles 2028 Games, returning the Olympic sport to California, where so much of its history began.

Skaters argue about the Olympics as if contests were new, but they are nearly as old as the sport. The first National Skateboard Championships were held in Anaheim, California, in 1965 and shown on ABC’s Wide World of Sports. Patti McGee won the women’s title and appeared on the cover of Life magazine that year.

In 1975 the Del Mar Nationals in California became famous for the Zephyr team from Santa Monica and Venice. Skaters such as Peggy Oki, Tony Alva, Jay Adams and Stacy Peralta rode low and fast, copying surf moves on the slalom and freestyle courses. Their style shocked judges used to upright, stiff riding, and it changed how skating looked.

In 1995 the cable channel ESPN held the Extreme Games in Rhode Island, renamed the X Games from 1996. Tony Hawk landed the 900, two and a half spins in the air, at the 1999 X Games in San Francisco. These events built a competitive side of skating, with prize money, sponsors and television, long before the IOC took notice.

When the IOC added skateboarding, many skaters were unhappy. They saw skating as closer to art or music than to a sport. To them, its heart was style, creativity and freedom: riding a spot no one else noticed, filming a part with friends, inventing a trick. They worried that national teams, coaches, uniforms and judges with scoring sheets would turn that into a checklist.

Another concern was control. Skaters had built their own companies, magazines and videos for decades. Some resented that an outside federation, which also runs roller sports, would set the rules. There were also worries about pressure on very young athletes chasing medals.

Supporters answered with results. Olympic status brought government money for skateparks and coaching in many countries. It showed girls skating on a world stage, and the Tokyo podiums inspired new riders in Japan, Brazil and beyond. Many top skaters chose to compete and said the Games let them represent their families and hometowns.

Most skaters today hold a middle view. The Olympics are one part of skateboarding, not the whole thing. Videos, street spots, local parks and DIY builds go on as before. A subculture, a group with its own values and style inside a larger society, can join the mainstream and still keep its own life.

Many Olympic skaters started riding before age ten. Medical groups such as the American Academy of Pediatrics advise that children under five should not ride skateboards and that children six to ten should be supervised by an adult. Young skaters who reach a high level usually grow up with coaches, parents and older skaters watching closely.

Top skaters fall often. Practicing a hard trick can mean dozens of attempts. Learning to fall small helps: crouching low, rolling with the fall, sliding on knee pads on a ramp, and not catching the body with locked straight arms. Wrist injuries are among the most common skateboarding injuries, and wrist guards help prevent them.

Park skaters fly above the coping, so a fall can come from well over a meter higher than the ramp’s edge. A helmet that fits snugly and is buckled is standard equipment in the bowl. Sky Brown’s 2020 training fall and her return to win medals showed both the danger of the event and how much careful recovery matters.

For anyone inspired by the Games, the path is the same one the champions took. Start with a helmet, pads and flat shoes on smooth ground. Learn to push, stop and turn. Move to small ramps and low curbs at a skatepark. The tricks seen at the Olympics come after years of steady practice.