Skatepark Guidelines: Friend or Foe?
Words: Tom Miller (founder of Skaters for Public Skateparks)
Photos: Hirsch, Coastal BC, & Bridge City Bombers


Experienced skaters can generally agree on a few key points regarding the current public skatepark boom. First, public skateparks are good for skateboarding. Second, most public skateparks are far less than what they could be. And finally, there is no consensus on how to evolve this generally good thing for skateboarding to a point where the skateparks are truly what they could be.

Public skateparks run the gamut of quality. On the dreary end of the spectrum, there are maddeningly overpriced plastic/steel ramp parks designed and built by playground engineers who have no real knowledge of skateboarding. Closer to heaven are the latest concrete parks with ample space for true street-like skating and bowls of unlimited shape, size, and flavor.

Vancouver B.C. Skate Plaza - Photo courtesy Coastal B.C.

Have you seen video of Vancouver, B.C.'s new street plaza? It's incredible. It actually looks like street skating, a nirvana-like convergence of killer street props conveniently located under a series of bridges. Notably, it looks nothing like typical "street" skating in today's skateparks. Personally, I can't help but agree with Rob Dydrek that attempts to accommodate street skating in tiny 10,000 square foot skateparks are an embarrassment to street skating.

Florence Oregon Skatepark - Photo courtesy Hirsch

Florence, Oregon's new park deserves attention on the tranny point of view. There builders provided a series of hot wheels tracks over a tunnel, one accumulating four feet of view, the other venturing straight into oververt. The unique donut-like feature will surely keep skaters intrigued for years to come. "Joey made the donut!" you can hear Florence's school-age kids exclaim in the hallways. A park that keeps you coming back is a sign of great design and construction.

So why aren't more parks like Vancouver's plaza and Florence's skatepark? And what would it take to get every park to that level? To answer these questions one invariably turns to the question of skatepark guidelines: if we know what makes these parks great, and how to make them, then perhaps we should standardize the formula of greatness.

This seems like a simple enough proposition. But would standardized design impede the very foundation of skateboarding: limitless creativity? This is a fundamental question of great import, and my conclusion is that I don't have one.

I can start with a basic premise that every skatepark should have quality street-like terrain with ample space between props for set-up and run-out, and that bowls should be provided of various depths and transitions to provide a rich diversity of experiences. The visioning is easy. Enacting that vision is quite different.

What happens if your town has 5,000 square feet for a skatepark? You cannot simultaneously provide quality street and quality roundwalls in 5000 square feet. No way. Does that mean the chance to provide something for skaters in that space should be rejected? I can't imagine a skater that wouldn't want 5,000 square feet of good terrain. But if the standards say good street and good bowls it can't be done. You could provide a little bit of good street or maybe two good bowls in 5000 square feet but neither would make for rich terrain and certainly no good combination of both.

And how specific can you get with design criteria? Even if you mandate some amount of vert roundwalls, as I would, would they be 9-foot tranny? 11.5-foot tranny? How big? Or if you didn't specify you might get the playground companies of the industry with company policies of providing nothing greater six feet tall reading the specifications and providing 3 foot trannies to 3 feet of vert. A mix like that would make an interesting novelty but not something you'd want to skate day in and day out at your local skatepark. You'd be bummed that small and tight, wishing for the 6-foot walls to be 7 or 8-foot trannies.

West Linn Oregon Skatepark - Photo by Bridge City Bombers

What about flat bottom? In Oregon the newest parks seem to have less and less flat. Initially, most experienced skaters bemoan the lack of flat but once they get used to it they can't imagine it being any other way. It's amazing to hear people say today that Newberg or Aumsville are slow parks. But compared the second Lincoln City park or West Linn, they're definitely slower.

So okay, scrap the guidelines altogether. I was just reading the monthly National Parks & Recreation magazine and page 4 features a full-page ad for Playworld Systems, whose "family of brands" covers 6 subsidiaries including Woodward Ramps and Rails. Once upon a time the name Woodward had value in the skate world; today the reality is quite different, no doubt in part because of affiliation with the likes of Playworld Systems, whose interest in skateboarding surely ends with one value: monetary profit. Without guidelines Playworld Systems and its peer multimillion playground companies can continue to market their product scams to unwitting municipalities around the nation, maybe even yours.

At the end of the day, it seems clear that skatepark design guidelines have clear advantages but also considerable disadvantages. Skaters are best off not relying on others to speak to their needs, but instead getting involved in the design discussion to ensure the community's decision-makers have a firm grasp of what they're trying to provide: as complete a skatepark as possible.