Creativity,Conviviality,and Civil Society in Neoliberalizing Public Space: Changing Politics and Discourses in Skateboarder Activism From New York City to Los Angeles

From Spatial Contestation to Tactical Urbanism

Skateboarders appropriate, contest, and use space differently than other citizens (Borden, 2001; Howell, 2008). While significant parts of 1970s skateboarding took place in (sub)urban roads, much was contained in backyard pools and city-designated skateparks. Recessions in the 1980s democratized the activity as skateparks closed down and the impervious urban fabric, constantly producing new spaces through urban development, provided an endless playground to explore. Prior academic treatments of skateboarding have argued that the activity has limitless potential for tactical transgression, architectural transformation, and political resistance against excessive policing (see Borden, 2001; Browne & Francis, 1993; Carr, 2010; Chiu, 2009; Donnelly, 2008; Nemeth, 2006). Recent research, however, has posited that skateboarding is much more complex than mere spatial struggles between skateboarders, city managers, architects, and other users of urban public space (see Borden, 2019a; Lombard, 2016; Snyder, 2017; Yochim, 2010). In an effort to understand skateboarding from alternative angles, scholars have focused on the evolution of skateboarding from its earlier transgressive antecedents into a lauded neoliberal activity that attracts “creative classes” to urban environs (Howell, 2005); a liberating activity for youth and a legitimate subcultural career pursuit, which influences art, film, and photography (Borden, 2019a; Snyder, 2011; Yochim, 2010); and an urban endeavor that endures spatial struggles, participates in activist movements, and harnesses its powerful entrepreneurial and political capital to reopen and reclaim public space (Snyder, 2017).

Although skateboarding is sometimes celebrated for its neoliberal characteristics, presently, in most contemporary cities, skateboarders’ increased exposure within plaza-like spaces still produces a lack of public understanding and leads to negative perceptions of skateboarding. This phenomenon has engendered planning responses that make skateboarding an illegal activity. Regulatory and physical barriers limit skateboarders’ use of space largely because skateboarding has been seen as a “sport with an outlaw aura, a punk image, and with very little public acceptance” (Browne & Francis, 1993, p. 46). Skateboarding is viewed as a subversive subculture worthy of exclusionary regulations because skateboarders predominantly use objects, materials, and spaces for their use values. This usage denies the logic of the entrepreneurial city as pre-eminently existing to serve global flows of information and capital (Lefebvre, 1996). Therefore, cities respond to skateboarding by closing underused spaces that skateboarders have historically frequented, substituting these closures with inadequately designed, yet effectively controlled skateparks. Cities provide skateparks as contained, creative, legal, and spectacular recreation spaces to reposition skateboarding as an accepted form of leisure and as a sport compatible with reshaped, marketable urban images (Chiu, 2009; Giamarino, 2017). Notwithstanding these spatial hurdles, skaters continually contest and transgress exclusionary regulations and design barriers to appropriate urban objects and perform tricks upon them.

In his study of LA skateboarders, Snyder (2017) defines a subculture as simply a small group existing within the cultural context of larger society, carrying its own “distinct language, skill set, worldview, and set of values” (Snyder, 2017, p. 56). Borden (2001) posits that skateboarders’ language, skill set, worldview, and set of values exists in cities’ leftover spaces, where they produce new, imagined, and real spaces, claiming their right to the city through the appropriation of mundane objects often overlooked by everyday citizens. For example, at the Courthouse-one of the most frequented skate plazas in LA today-skateboarders prefer to skate atop a stage with seemingly no use to other participants in the space, ledges frequently sat upon for lunch breaks by adjacent office workers, and a fountain that has been drained of its water. At the Banks, an analogous space to the Courthouse in NYC, skateboarders prefer to skate brick embankments, a stair set used by pedestrians to walk down, and vertical concrete blocks that hold up the off-ramp of the Brooklyn Bridge.

Other property and public safety rationales for criminalizing skateboarding include minor property damage and injury liability (Nemeth, 2006). However, prior research has debunked claims made by cities that skateboarders will sue when injured or that property damage is insuperable (Howell, 2008). Regardless, cities provide skateparks to offset skateboarders’ exclusion from other urban public spaces. Planned skateparks are rife with problems as planners and architects have failed to fuse their expertise with the contextual, spatial, and architectural knowledge that skateboarders possess. Local experiences and knowledge provided by community members can play a key role in informing and improving urban policy, planning, and design of space (Corburn, 2003). Following Arnstein’s (1969)Citizen Ladder of Participation, Giamarino’s (2017) study of skateboarders in LA found that skateboarders rarely interact with urban planners in community engagement workshops about skatepark design. This suggested that the city of LA provides skateparks and expects skateboarders to appreciate the designated park. Many skateparks, without the lack of input from skateboarders, are poorly designed while the activity is rendered illegal in all other areas of the city. This is unfortunate because skateparks offer delineated facilities that stymy spontaneity and creativity and cities typically afford more complex spaces that become socially produced and spatially practiced by skateboarders, which creates a discursive medium for skateboarders to perform tactical urbanism and display their performances to the public (Chiu, 2009).

Brenner (2016) questions whether “‘tactical urbanisms’ provide tractable solutions, or at least opens up some productive perspectives for actualizing alternative urban futures” (p.129) in the face of neoliberal urbanism. Tactical urbanism possesses an anti-planning rhetoric and privileges incremental built environment interventions over citywide reforms or policies (Brenner, 2016). We explore the ways in which citizen-led mobilizations either generate friction against or actually subvert neoliberalism. Revanchist municipal laws, similar to those imposed on skateboarders, emerged in the early 1980s in the US. They were stoked by fear of local crime and legitimized the exclusion of ‘undesirable’ uses and users of city streets (Smith, 1996). As a response to economic recessions and global terrorist discourses, neoliberal urban policies often privilege corporate interests over those of socially marginal groups (e.g., immigrants, protesters; Mitchell, 2003). They do this through more subtle, strategic means to attract creative classes and new investment (Florida, 2002). Skateboarding provides an alternative lens for us to explore complex spatial subversions through an analysis of the two skateboarding spaces we observed. Our exploration illustrates the ways in which skateboarders combine their tactical interventions with neoliberal ideals to temporarily or permanently claim their right to neoliberal, revanchist city space.

Skateboarding is primarily seen as a tactical intervention that transforms underutilized spaces into sites of bustling, creative activity. Because cities like LA and NYC are polymorphic amalgamations of concrete and architecture, skateboarders appropriate spaces based on opportunity, as opposed to need (Campo, 2013). They discover underutilized, derelict spaces while skating the streets or passing by in an automobile, then disseminate this information through word-of-mouth, social media, or visual cues. For example (see Figure 1), the Banks, at the time of our field research, was enclosed in a chain link fence. Photos circulating on skate blogs and social media showed that there was a hole in the fence. Skateboarders, noting this “spatial tactic” – a calculated, cooperative spatio-temporal action performed by a marginalized population to navigate the everyday reality of and appropriate exclusive urban spaces (cf. de Certeau, 1984), strategized what times to go to this space to avoid police confrontation. For a limited time (cf. Chiu, 2009), they modified and transformed the site’s meaning from a closed-off space to the public into a recreational skateboarding spot.

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Figure 1.

Opening in fence as spatial tactic to appropriate the Banks by skateboarders (Alley, 2017).

Neoliberal Advocacy Embodied in Contemporary Urban Skateboarding

Davies (2017) posits that neoliberalism has disenchanted any notion of what a public good is, as intrinsic values are replaced by extrinsic economic valuations. Thus, the key components of neoliberalism are the principles of a free market, entrepreneurialism, and an ethos of competitiveness that reorganizes society and produces precarity, worthlessness, and inequality (Davies, 2017). Neoliberalism seeks the “‘transformation of state action’ by making the state itself a sphere governed by rules of competition and subject to efficiency constraints similar to those experienced by private enterprises” (Dardot & Laval, 2013, p. 216). Due to this transformation, policies are disciplinary and exclusive in character. These policies are much more difficult for urban populations to perceive because the government implants regulatory, economic, and behavioral rules into persons’ subconscious behaviors and movements in physical space. Although neoliberalism is largely exploitative and profit-driven, it offers limited concrete forms of hope. Hope materializes as democracy and opportunities for open participation in boosting local economies if state apparatuses formulate path-dependent policies and socially-embedded regimes to operationalize neoliberalism (cf. Brenner & Theodore, 2002; Ong, 2006). While cities govern through disciplinary political and economic competition, neoliberalism, as discussed later in our comparative analysis, produces a global, neoliberal society, which manufactures neoliberal individuals who are conditioned by entrepreneurialism and competition (Dardot & Laval, 2013). Therefore, some collective groupings of individuals like skateboarders have been successful in navigating increasingly neoliberal urban environments. The historical competitiveness and entrepreneurialism associated with skateboarding has played a key role for skate communities that adopt spatial tactics to claim their right to the city.

This infusion of neoliberalism into everyday life is the reason why skateparks are preferred over the appropriation of plazas. Skateparks are usually paid through private-public partnerships. They are also a means of economic competition that spur the gentrification of adjacent communities. Skateboarders supervise and police themselves and others in these spaces, maintain order in neighborhoods, and instill entrepreneurial qualities in individuals (Howell, 2008). In exchange for recreational space, skateboarders must act responsibly in these designated spaces, function as better users than more ‘undesirable’ users, willingly acknowledge and accept the illegality of their activity outside these parks, and behave appropriately within the skateparks. In rare cases, instead of building expensive skateparks, cities are realizing the marketable potential of skateboarding as it relates to neoliberal development goals. This has sometimes allowed people to skate in natural settings such as plazas after business hours and on weekends. Cities are finding it not just economically viable to tolerate skateboarding, but also beneficial in attracting creative crowds to weave authenticity, spontaneity, and vibrancy into their respective urban fabrics.

As skateboarding has become more popular, cities have started to celebrate the subculture as part of the “creative class.” This celebration has allowed for temporary spatial victories. The case of Philadelphia’s Love Park serves as a primary example of how skateboarding simultaneously interacts with, wins over, and confronts both entrepreneurial and revanchist urbanism. In 2000, a ban to skateboarders was proposed at an underused downtown plaza called Love Park. Economic and political restructuring created a strict regulatory regime to combat damage to the space, limit threats of liability lawsuits, and provide security and order (Nemeth, 2006). For the space to remain open, it was important for street skaters to be marketable to the entrepreneurial and competitive hunger of Philadelphia. The shoe company DC invested $1 million to offset damages accrued at the park due to skateboarding. The city of Philadelphia also began to acknowledge that skateboarders’ activities served as cultural, economic, and competitive catalysts for further development of the declining city center and influx of creatives. Skateboarders, through a successful campaign against police sweeps and the skateboard ban, brought together activist organizations, private businesses, planners, and academics to temporarily lift the ban, reopen the space, and rebrand the skate community as part of the “creative class” that generates revenue for the city through the production of marketable media imagery. Howell (2005) argues that skateboarding reshapes a city into an “Entertainment Machine” that spurs additional consumptions of space (Howell, 2005). Philadelphia originally wanted to redesign Love Park for $800,000, but

increased flexibility and mobility of capital, the rise in telecommunications technology which allows transactions and communication to take place instantly and on a global scale, and the decrease in federal aid to cities, [had] forced business elites and political leaders in these cities into an entrepreneurial role in promoting urban economic growth. (Nemeth, 2006, pp. 304-305)

Philadelphia took advantage of the entrepreneurial nature of skateboarding companies and mega-events as a temporary, competitive boost to the economy. They then marketed skateboarding in the space to attract creatives to the downtown, which inevitably permanently closed the space to skateboarders again.

Skateboarding’s competitive and entrepreneurial nature has been ignored in prior literature (Donnelly, 2008), but it has always been a competitive, entrepreneurial endeavor. In the 1970s and 1980s, skateboarding predominantly took place as a sport in skateparks where organized competitions were held (Borden, 2019a). Today, skateboarding mega-events such as the X-Games and Street League Series, held in global cities like Barcelona and Los Angeles, award hundreds of thousands of dollars to winners (Donnelly, 2008; Rinehart, 2008). Skateboarding also creates subcultural, entrepreneurial career opportunities (Snyder, 2017). This phenomenon is showcased in the documentary The Man Who Souled The World, a film about Steve Rocco, which documents how he transformed the skateboard industry from corporate-owned to a skater-owned, billion dollar industry (Hill, 2007). Skateboard foundations play a substantial community development role in promoting the activity as a self-sustaining, competitive, and entrepreneurial endeavor worthy of incorporation into neoliberal cities. For example, foundations constantly fundraise to build skateparks around the world, host skateboarding-oriented events globally, and support youth development in low-income communities through skateboarding camps and educational programs. Larger foundations such as the Tony Hawk Foundation (2019) have raised over $7.9 million to help construct 611 skateparks throughout the US. Smaller foundations such as the Harold Hunter Foundation (2019) focus on hosting annual contests within parks in NYC and promote skateboarding as a healthier outlet, which “builds character, and instills a spirit of community involvement, self-efficacy, and entrepreneurship.” Cities are beginning to recognize that the incorporation of skateboarding into metropolitan urban fabrics may bring about positive social and economic benefits, reduce crime, spur entrepreneurialism, and produce socially viable spaces.

The combination of tactical transgression and the entrepreneurial, competitive nature of skateboarding has empowered skateboarders. The political spaces created through this empowerment have been predicated on the intrinsic nature of the activity, imbued with mobility, pleasure, and joy, whereby skateboarders carve out an endless, accidental playground for all (Borden, 2019b). The subcultural collective has leveraged their newfound political power and mobilized activist movements that have led to spatial victories. These successful campaigns have led to short-lived successes where the spaces are still closed, but accessible through transgression (see Carr, 2010; Chiu, 2009; Howell, 2005; Nemeth, 2006) and long-term successes where spaces were permanently opened as multi-purpose and skateboarding is legal (see Borden, 2016; Giamarino, 2017; Orpana, 2016; Snyder, 2017; Willing & Shearer, 2016).

Scholars have additionally ascribed skateboarders’ desire to claim city space to the historical iconicism and sacredness that skateboard spots become layered with over time (O’Connor, 2018; Snyder, 2017). This sacredness is facilitated through the dissemination of skateboard media (e.g., videos, magazine coverage, photographs, and sharing of locations via social media). This virtual and physical writing of emotional and cultural meaning within mundane spaces may motivate successful activist campaigns to liberate criminalized space. However, it usually induces skateboarders to perform a regular “secular pilgrimage” to access the everyday plaza or street (O’Connor, 2018).

The media sometimes considers the recent construction boom and proliferation of skateparks in large cities around the world as a symbol of triumph for skateboarders (see for example, Ihaza, 2018). However, the reasons for the construction of skateparks or the allowance of skateboarders in previously criminalized space is much more complicated than the media suggests. Skateparks are still fraught with design problems due to a lack of engagement with skaters. They are provided to create ideals of acceptable citizenship-the acceptance of surveillance, self-policing of order, and the bolstering of corporate capitalism (Beal & Atencio, 2016). Cities attempt to offset the closure of public space through the provision of designated skateparks, often placing them in high-crime neighborhoods and at the margins of cities to drive out other urban problems (e.g., homelessness). Therefore, the continued criminalization of skateboarding, destruction of do-it-yourself (DIY) skateparks, and construction of subpar skateparks has led skaters to harness their collective entrepreneurial and competitive power to become political activists, attend public hearings, protect the closure of public spaces, and preserve subcultural landmarks they have frequented for decades.

By comparing the two unique plaza spaces in NYC and LA, our research adds supplemental insight to skateboarding as tactical transgression, architectural transformation, political resistance, and lauded neoliberal activity. We build on prior skateboarding literature by analyzing the discourses adopted by the NYC and LA skate communities. In so doing, we examine how public plazas become multi-use, legalized skate spaces. Our findings suggest the possibility of an alternative urban future where cities can provide both designated skateparks and legalize additional public spaces for skateboarding. We argue that excluded populations can claim their right to city space when they adopt certain tactical and neoliberal discourses.

Transforming the Banks into a Securitized Space

Abutting the Brooklyn Bridge, on the Manhattan side to the north in the shadows, this found skate space is only accessible through a wire-cut in the fence with exposed sharp edges, a small sliver of a gap between the fence, one police barricade, and a large freight storage container. It can also be accessed by strategically positioning abandoned drink coolers that aid in hopping the tall fence. Five skaters on an autumn fieldwork day in 2017 have traveled from another legalized skate spot at Martinez Playground (Blue Park) in Williamsburg to skate the Banks. There were issues of accessing the space while conducting fieldwork. The first time, a policeman guarded the cut in the fence (refer back to Figure 1) and another patrol car blocked an additional entrance for an hour. An elderly person stops and asks us if the space is still closed to skateboarders, lamenting that the city has not already reopened this recreational space to the adjacent community. Inside at the Banks, the skaters gain speed simply by traveling downhill upon the brick floor, indicative of NYC skateboarders’ fast-paced, rugged style of skating. The Banks on this day, and presently due to the time-sensitive trespassing that takes place here, is about skating the banks and the concrete stanchion to partake in performing upon a slice of skateboarding history.

Unlike the Courthouse, the Banks only affords camaraderie through cheering for tricks landed by banging one’s board on the ground and less through conversation during breaks. Skaters are here to skate and document tricks because at any moment the skateboarders may be asked to leave by security. For example, the skater pictured in Figure 2 would zoom up the bank and attempt to flip their board while trying to land and skate back down the brick bank. They tried this over ten times while other skateboarders attempted to go up the bank and ollie ² onto the ledge to slide on it. This ledge was an object that skateboarders had strategically constructed to augment the usage of the space for skateboarders, but no one else. Any sort of break at this spot could be detrimental. Police might kick out skaters and less time would be spent interacting with the space and its architecture. Documentation and dissemination of photos and videos at the Banks indicate to the global skate community that the spot is still ‘skateable.’ The media also suggests that the space is perennially barricaded, criminalized, and policed. Traditional skateboarding transgression and contestation, through strategic spatio-temporal tactics to use the space, are necessary.

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Figure 2.

Skateboarder approaches steep banks to perform a trick by riding up, landing, and rolling back down (Photograph by authors).

Remaking the West LA Courthouse as a Spontaneous Space

The Courthouse contains smooth concrete, a funky amphitheater stage that is too high for most skaters to hop up onto (see Figure 3), concrete ledges with purposefully designed metal iron to prevent damage, stairs to jump up and down on, and a drained fountain that has been redesigned with a concrete box and angled walls for skaters to ride on. During a wintry fieldwork day, there are approximately 20 skateboarders using various objects scattered throughout the Courthouse. Two are jumping off the stairs, three are carving the drained fountain walls, ten are grinding and sliding on top of metal ledges, and five are attempting to jump waist-high onto the stage-a difficult task.

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Figure 3.

A skateboarder approaches the stage at the Courthouse to ollie (jump) onto it (Photograph by authors).

Skateboarders relay how iconic this space is and how appreciative they are that LA has permanently legalized the Courthouse and repurposed it from a derelict courtyard to a bustling, multi-use skate plaza. For example, the security personnel of the Courthouse would watch skateboarders, even filming their tricks to post on their personal social media pages. Nearby police park their patrol cars, notice the skateboarders, and walk into their station without mentioning anything to the skaters. The cops’ presence deters behaviors that skaters might indulge in otherwise-drinking and smoking during breaks. This space allows skaters to build community, friendships, and solidarity while progressing their skill sets and spatial repertoires upon the architectural objects. Their practice and presence continually layer the space with subcultural capital and meaning for the global skate community to consume through social media documentation and rapid, digital dissemination of tricks in this space.

The entrepreneurial coalition’s campaign to save the Courthouse and secure its legitimacy

Because skateboarding’s history and culture is directly tied to and embedded within LA, the activist campaign in the contemporary, entrepreneurial city of LA was a fairly easy struggle compared to the Banks. There was a caveat. The archetypically apolitical skate community would need to mobilize, attend community hearings, and find funding to upkeep the area and curb damage. The facile efforts of the campaign were due in large part to the small amount of corporate stakeholders and cooperation of government agencies involved in the activist campaign. The Courthouse is a municipal space containing a library, a police station, and courthouse, all overseen at the local level by the city of LA. In 2014, skateboarders only had to convince adjacent neighborhood residents, the local city council, and City Councilperson Jay Handal that they should allow the space to be permanently reopened.

First, skaters successfully used social media pages such as Instagram to share information on community meetings where skaters could participate in public discussions regarding the proposal of future plans for the Courthouse. Then, they established a private-public partnership made up of professional skaters and a few supportive city officials. This culminated in a five—year contract between Nike and the city of LA. Nike agreed within an hour of the skate community reaching out to them to allocate $10,000 a year to maintain the space. For a large corporation such as Nike, it was a small sum considering they had already spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to renovate the space for Go Skateboarding Day in 2014. Skaters interacted with a relatively empathetic city council and residential community. They convinced the city that any media coverage within the space that skaters might garner would boost LA’s marketability as entrepreneurial, creative, and competitive. In addition, skaters suggested that by allowing skateboarding, the self—policing nature of the activity would keep out more illicit behaviors (i.e., drug use) and undesirable populations (i.e., the homeless). We focus here on the economic power leveraged by the local skateboard community and the neoliberal behaviors exhibited by individual skateboarders that led to the successful legalization of the Courthouse. ³

The campaign was borne out of a proposal by LA Parks to build a hideous sound wall around Stoner Skate Plaza, which would fortress the skatepark and keep eyes off the street. This was in direct contradiction to the original reasoning to build the skatepark-to increase visibility, encourage more foot traffic, and have skateboarders deter gangs from occupying the park space. Out of this initial proposal, the West LA Community of Skateboarders/Stoner Skate Plaza Association was formed by skaters Alec Beck and Aaron Snyder to broach the subject of saving the Courthouse at community meetings concerning the sound wall (Eisenhour, 2014). Within three days, the skate community was mobilized via famous skaters’ social media pages. The posts encouraged skaters to attend community meetings, respect the space while it was remodeled for Go Skateboarding Day, and not skate it while the local city council deliberated whether or not to accept Nike’s $50,000 proposal to maintain the space and prevent minor damage. The city council, in a 12-1 vote in July 2014, decided to approve the contractual agreement. This was done largely because the skateboard community leveraged its entrepreneurial, economic, and political power to maintain and self-police the spot. They also exhibited neoliberal behaviors of citizenship, responsibility, and civility by not skating or trashing the space while deliberations were in progress (see Figure 4). The activist campaign finished with a ribbon-cutting ceremony that prominently displayed Nike’s corporate branding. This branding convinced the city council that the space would likely attract more foot traffic and help make LA a preferred destination for skateboarders and other creative classes (Altema, 2014).

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Figure 4.

Skateboarder-created signage asks skateboarders to exhibit neo-liberal/lauded behaviors to permanently legalize space (Eisenhour, 2014).

Creativity

Skateboarding has historically been characterized as a creative reproduction of urban space, transcending a prescribed spatial meaning and instilling an alternative use value into a setting (Borden, 2001). Skateboarders constitute one of the pioneering creative classes of modern cities. Their city remaking efforts have inspired more subcultural groups, such as parkour enthusiasts and flash mobs, to engage with the built environment in unconventional, daring, and often innovative ways. Collectively, they directly, or indirectly, inspire contemporary architects, landscape architects, and urban designers to reshape public space into more spontaneous and fluid forms. In the early 2000s, as street skateboarding was legislated out of public spaces in American cities, skaters had to remake themselves into entrepreneurs by venturing into a variety of startup businesses and industries, including fashion, film, digital media, and other various art forms. In short, skaters are both social and economic creative classes for neoliberalizing cities. For LA, including skaters into its contemporary urban landscape helps to reinvent new creative city images, which helps assuage the stereotype of the city as a sprawling landscape filled with affluent suburbs, overly-touristic downtown spaces, and heavy vehicular traffic. This concept of creativity interested a major corporation (Nike SB) enough to finance the renovation and maintenance of the courthouse plaza, where throngs of skaters endorse their corporate image actively on a daily basis. This space is a win-win strategy for Nike, the city of LA, and the skate community. Ultimately, the city government benefits most from the corporate-community partnership. They do so by saving their municipal budget spending and time in facility maintenance, park policing, and response to adjacent neighborhoods’ complaints.

Conviviality

Henry Shaftoe (2012) defines “conviviality” as “the state of being sociable, jovial or festive-all signs of good health and wellbeing and effective public spaces are the prime locations for the nurturing of such states of mind and body.” More importantly, this sense of conviviality gives a city the qualities of being alive, welcoming, and friendly. It also prevents any public space from being claimed or dominated by one particular group. At the Courthouse, the skaters’ activism was supported by the fact that skaters and non-skaters (e.g., regular pedestrians, office workers, and the homeless) have shared the site together since the 1990s. LA acknowledged that the skaters’ existence would inform the public how different groups may find their own spaces in an all-inclusive plaza that values diversity, peace, and safety. This hopeful potential of spatial existence by individuals or groups is lauded by any type of neoliberal discourse. Moreover, skaters’ choreographic routines showcased embodied physical performances that present a vibrant downtown scene more vividly and enduringly than other consumption-based cultural landscapes, such as outdoor concerts or sidewalk cafes that mainly appeal to more privileged, included, and affluent citizens. The value-freeness of skateboard culture, evident in its longtime occupancy of a space to extract a use value, endorses a sense of conviviality for the Courthouse and LA in general. Castree (2008) suggests that neoliberalism provides a shell for capitalism. Conviviality here, as a social dimension of neoliberalism, provides Nike a protective discourse to justify its sponsorships of festive skate events that regularly draw crowds of teens, young adults, and tourists craving culture to this space.

Civil Society

Instead of abiding by the regulations authorities impose on them, skaters regulate themselves and produce an impression that they are willing to respect and befriend other users of space. The sign posted within the courthouse plaza (refer back to Figure 4) sends an important message of a cognizant, responsible, self-regulated skate community. Castree (2008) suggests that “civil society” is one of the major features of neoliberalization, equally important when compared with other characteristics such as deregulation, privatization, and marketization. Even though the legalization of the plaza as a skate spot does give Nike more opportunity to brand itself and market its products, the legalization does not solely rely on Nike’s financial power to maintain the built environment. Relying only on Nike’s corporate contributions would simply recreate and reproduce images of privatization and marketization of public space. Rather, skaters appropriate the power of private funding in claiming their right to the plaza by educating the public that a skater is/can be a mature, empathetic citizen, not a hoodlum or a vandalizer. Instead of surrendering to corporate control, as seen in urban plazas elsewhere, skaters here partnered with a corporation and coopt Nike’s and LA’s city-branding desires to help improve the public image of skateboarding and decriminalize the space. Thus, the corporate-community partnership convinced the city and the public that skaters deserve a right to the Courthouse, and to the city overall, by reiterating their new identity as members of a civil society.