Skateboarding and Urban Landscapes in Asia: Endless Spots

Skateboarding and Urban Landscapes in Asia: Endless Spots
As urban development in Asia has accelerated, cities in the region have become central to skateboarding culture, livelihoods, and consumption. Asia's urban landscapes are desired for their endless supply of 'spots'. Spots are not built for skateboarding; they are accidents of urban planning and commercial activity; glitches in the urban machine. Skateboarders and filmers chase these spots to make skate video, skateboarding's primary cultural artefact. Once captured, skate video circulates rapidly through digital platforms to millions of viewers, enrolling spots from Shenzhen to Ramallah into an alternative cartography of Asia. This book explores this way of desiring and consuming urban Asia, and the implications for relational and comparative hierarchies of urban development.

Endorsements:
"This book pushes the understanding of urban space in fascinating new ways by emphasizing the unique view upon the city that skaters develop through their peculiar spatial practice. It presents a huge number of rich insights that have been needed but never put to writing."
- Max D. Woodworth, Ohio State University, Department of Geography

"This empirically-rich, conceptually-thorough, and geographically-focused narrative opens up a whole new world of skateboarding to the academy. McDuie-Ra vividly explores how skateboarding has mutated from the West to the East, and in the process highlights the broadening cosmopolitanism of skateboarding across different cultural backgrounds from all over the world."
- Dr Oli Mould, Lecturer in Human Geography, Royal Holloway, University of London

"A remarkable reconceptualization of skateboarding geography and landscapes. Redrawing skateboarding's world to encompass the likes of China, Dubai, India, Kazakhstan, India and Palestine, McDuie-Ra rethinks skateboarding's global mobilities."
- Iain Borden, Professor of Architecture & Urban Culture, University College London

Author/Editor

Duncan McDuie-Ra

Publisher

Amsterdam University Press

ISBN

9789463723138

Publication date

1 Jan 2021 – 31 Dec 2021

Specialisation

Social Sciences

Theme

Urban / Rural
Society
Media
Art and Culture
Globalisation

Region

Inter-Asia