The frameworks of urbanity: the impacts of street skateboarding in the city of São Paulo

ABSTRACT

This article explores the multiple configurations, distinct agencies, negotiations and contradictions which compose the making cities and urban lives. I particularly focus on the tactical negotiations developed by street skateboarders to overcome the restrictive urban policies in São Paulo city. I recognize tactics and strategies as powerful conceptual tools to analyzes how the practice of street skateboarding involves struggles, resistances, transgressions, conflicts and negotiations, and different positions against the structures of power and control produced by urban government policies over the public areas. The São Paulo of skateboarding, therefore, presents itself not as something finished and defined, but in permanent construction due to its relational and situational character.

KEYWORDS:
Urbanity; urban spaces; street skateboarding; city; Urban Anthropology