BETWEEN BOTTOM-UP ACTIONS AND CIVIC DESIGN: SHARED DESIGN PROCESS FOR A “SKATEBOARD URBANISM” IN BARCELONA

Skateboarding became in the last decades progressively more accepted by the public realm, it is now an official sport in the Olympic games, a popular sport taught in some schools, universities, and poor communities for its health and social values. The amount of skatepark has grown enormously as well as skateboarders of all gender and ages. It is important for architects and urban planners to document this growth and to understand what impacts this practice can have in our city and the skateboard culture so we can, in the future, integrate it in the best suitable way. Skateboard also asks a very important question about the nature of public space, how it can be socially diverse and democratic, what is hostile urbanism and how public space is used, engaged, and lived. This thesis will focus on the city of Barcelona, a living and cosmopolite city that must deal with a high amount of skateboarders. Barcelona became famous for skateboard due to its public spaces; it is considered a legendary city for skaters particularly because it is fitted for street skating. Street skating is an appropriation by a skater of an urban object that will allow the skater to practice and film. My study will focus and how skateboarders in Barcelona negotiate their presence in the built environment and how that urban history could be translated into design strategies. To achieve this, it is important to recall how skateboard appeared in the street, what critiques it makes through performing in the street and why is it important that it remain in the street. Barcelona’s fertile ground for skateboarding will be then investigated and specific case studies will be extracted as important spaces for the skateboarding culture and the city. Actual genuine participatory and democratic process design are very hard to distinguish from the always more present profit-oriented one. Barcelona but many cities tend to institutionalize problematic urban practices in this neo-liberal urbanism. I present here possible strategies for Barcelona too, instead of driving from the top, to help reinforce the skateboard community making it more diverse and opening them to a skate-friendly city.