Why Skate Parks are Essential Community Spaces - yes, really!

We can’t have been the only ones inspired by the teenage skate boarding stars of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

From the grind, to the fakie, to the carve and the kickflip - while we can’t really pretend to understand anything of what was actually going on - what we did take away was their passion, their determination and the amazing way in which they celebrated each other's successes.

It may be an individual sport at the Olympics, but skateboarding has its only community as any street based sport does, and as with any community it offers its members a safe, inclusive and cooperative environment in which to build connections, relationships and skills and/or knowledge.

What the skateboarding community can teach us is the importance of community and community spaces, specifically for teenagers and young adults. Sometimes in our bid to plan communities we tend to focus on the most vulnerable - the very young and the very old. But those in the middle, the teenagers and those entering adulthood, need quality spaces to go to. 

A new interest in skateboard parks and the resulting spaces coming out of that, should serve as inspiration to all of us who believe in community spaces as the heart of neighbourhoods and our communities. 

The guiding principles behind the design of a skate park or space, can be applied almost universally to community spaces as a whole. 

The most important one recognizes that a community space must be a fluid and flexible one. Very few urban centres or communities have the space and resources to have especially designed spaces for one specific use. Community spaces, by their very nature and definition, must be able to double, triple up for a variety of different uses while serving different sectors of the community at the same time. 

This is what we can term their functionality - how they cater for the varying needs of the community around them, once the skaters have gone home. The other issue is their usability, and in the case of skateparks, this is how it will be used by skaters. 

First priority is understanding the specific needs of both groups of community users, the second is how to put it into practice and develop the community space for both. 

Community spaces are vitally important for the young - regardless of what they actually use the space for. Skateboarding is another means to an end, but it can be anything from another sport to cultural or social activities. Crucially community spaces help people build confidence, and develop their own identity. This is an irreplaceable benefit that emphasizes the vital need for community spaces, not just on the periphery of our lives, but slap, bang right in the middle too. 

But what does this look like?

We can talk about the need for flexible community spaces forever - the need exists and for many this is not a surprise. But just how can we combine functionality, usability and what space and resources we have, in a creative and dynamic way in order to meet all of these needs in the best possible way. 

Envisioned and designed by artist Koo Jeong A, this installation skate park filled the ground floor gallery of Triennale Milano at OooOoO. Billed as an initiative space, with full public access it was part of a wider initiative and programme known as Play! This in turn was described as an opportunity for ‘cultural institutions to inquire, invest in, and foster new experiences of visitors, maximizing the ultimately of their exhibition spaces,’ by the coordinator, curator and gallery director Julia Peyton-Jones. 

This example also highlights the importance of community spaces that essentially move with the times - the community spaces of today designed for the young, can not look at the spaces designed for their grandparents or even parents. Community spaces are usually good at evolving naturally in order to meet these changing needs but sometimes they need a little more of a push to make them relevant. 

At Vonder we make it a priority to incorporate quality community spaces within all of our co-living complexes because these are what help to build important networks and relationships.