“Keep Your Wheels Off the Furniture”: The Marginalization of Street Skateboarding in the City of Melbourne’s “Skate Melbourne Plan”

Abstract

The City of Melbourne’s Skate Melbourne Plan purports to be skateboarder-centered, focusing on developing skate spaces for skateboarders. Drawing on research analyzing street skateboarders’ production of space and the importance of public spaces to street skateboarding, we examine how the Skate Melbourne Plan recognizes and supports street skateboarders’ capacity to skate in city environments. We suggest that rather than developing street skateboarding in the Melbourne Central Business District (CBD), the Skate Melbourne Plan reproduces negative constructions of young people who engage in street skateboarding as deviant and delinquent, by marginalizing and delegitimizing street skateboarding in public spaces.