Skateable City: Centering the Experiences, Needs and Desires of the Skating Community in the Redesign of an Urban Skatepark in Pōneke Wellington, New Zealand

Skateboarding is diversifying and gaining popularity amongst women and girls, neurodivergent, gender diverse and disabled folks. It is a self-paced, unstructured sport, tied to the urban environment, and is relatively affordable and accessible. There is increasing recognition of the social and cultural value of skateboarding in cities (Borden, 2019), as an activity that activates disused public spaces, and could contribute to making spaces safer for other users (Eden, 2016). It could be argued that a liveable city is a skateable city. Despite this, the planning and design of urban spaces typically either overlooks the potential program of skating (missing opportunities to make spaces skateable), or actively defends against skating, in the use of hostile metal ‘skate stoppers’ on ledges and furniture. These approaches work to relegate skateboarding to the confines of skateparks, but in Aotearoa New Zealand there is a shortage of dedicated urban skateparks, and most of the existing ones are outdated, weathered and not fit for purpose. This paper presents a collaborative project from Wellington, in Aotearoa New Zealand, which involves local government, designer-researchers and the skateboarding community working together to involve skaters in the redesign of an important but problematic central city skatepark. The project centers the voices of skaters, acknowledging their skills, expertise and experience, in order to create a future city that supports and fosters skate culture, as an exemplar of an inclusive, and collective approach to design and planning, that recognizes the valuable cultural and social contribution that skateboarding makes to a city. Borden, I, Skateboarding and the City: A complete History. London: Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2019. Eden, Gustav, quoted in Free Skate Magazine, 2016. https://www.freeskatemag.com/2016/11/09/inside-man-gustav-eden/