A battle of wills is being played out on Bristol’s ledges and benches. Skatestoppers – or “skater-haters”, as they are sometimes called – are metallic knobs attached to a city’s street furniture to prevent skateboarders from using them for tricks. Originating in America, they began appearing in Bristol more than 10 years ago. A leading manufacturer markets them as devices that prevent urban spaces from becoming “a practice ground for disruptive and destructive activity”.

The stoppers range from cumbersome metal clamps fitted to the sides of ledges, to unobtrusive and abrasive edges on otherwise smooth granite benches. Sometimes the stoppers are placed on ledges so high that they would be almost impossible to skate anyway.

The stoppers protect the often expensive ledges from becoming scratched and rounded off, and deter skateboarders from waxing them (skateboarders apply candle wax to ledges so there is less friction between them and the metal trucks of the board. Some people argue this wax leaves an unattractive stain on the ledges.)



The defensive modifications to our city’s ledges seem at odds with the widespread attitude of the local population

Skatestoppers appear on ledges, benches, walls and more. Photograph: Daryl Mersom

But that is not say the people of Bristol are all against skateboarding. Many are friendly and respectful to us; they seem to enjoy watching the spectacle, and even have a cautious attempt at skating. The defensive modifications to our city’s ledges seem at odds with the widespread attitude of the local population.



As a skateboarder, I believe the stoppers threaten our freedom to exercise our bodies and individuality in public space. At stake is the right of one social group to express themselves in what are supposed to be communal areas – although I use the phrase “social group” loosely, as skateboarding attracts people from every area of society.

Skatestoppers – because signs alone are not enough.’

Admittedly, skateboarding is a loud activity, but cities are loud places. The screeching of wheels on polished floors is just another feature of the plaza as performative space. Take all the noise and activity away, and plazas become sterile and disused. For architect Søren Nordal Enevoldsen, skate spots contribute to the vibrancy of a city: “Take Love Park in Philadelphia, San Francisco’s old EMB and Pier Seven, Macba in Barcelona, London’s Southbank, Tompkins Square Park [in New York], Opéra de Lyon – these places are all surrounded by busy urban life.”

According to DIY Bristol, a website set up to document the skateparks hand-built by the city’s local population, scratch marks on a ledge may “give people a moment’s displeasure as they walk past it on the way into work,” but this seems a fair exchange for the hours of enjoyment and creativity had on ledges such as these.

The website details the organised work of young people to reclaim public space for themselves. This same group of people is often presented as apathetic and difficult to galvanise. Clearly, the common goal of liberating these skate spots is having a positive influence on Bristol’s youth.



Occasionally, skatestoppers can backfire and actively encourage skateboarding. An obstacle that might have been uninteresting or that exists already in a skatepark – such as the brick bank on Bristol’s Millennium Promenade – can provoke our interest afresh when bumps or knobs are added to it, forcing us to approach it in a new way. In these cases, the mutable nature of the city provides fresh challenges to our creativity: a slight addition to a bank will keep us thinking for days.



Certainly, the people of Bristol have been provided with some excellent resources for skateboarding. Yet skateboarding in public spaces is about staking our claim to a piece of the urban landscape. We relish the chance to skate often imperfect and difficult obstacles, and to create new ways of interpreting them.

In Denmark, the benefits of street skateboarding are well-known. Israels Plads, a large public square in the centre of Copenhagen, incorporates skateable aspects into urban architecture. Activities such as skateboarding, basketball and scootering are encouraged. New York skateboarding website Quartersnacks sums up the response to the spots in Copenhagen, where the public are too busy enjoying the city “to tell you you’re ruining some slab of stone”.



When I interviewed Iain Borden, an academic interested in the place of skateboarding in cities, he was cautious not to describe what is happening in Denmark and elsewhere as a trend. “Does this all add up to a new trend in urban design? Not yet, no. But it does show that if public opinion continues to increasingly support skateboarding, as it seems to be doing, then the design ideas and talent are there, ready and waiting to seize the opportunity.”

Whether or not public opinion changes, the heart of the debate lies in how we perceive public space – and how we attach value to it. It seems there are some people in Bristol who would rather protect the right-angled edges on granite ledges from damage than see them used in a creative way.

This impulse works against the flux of the city by trying to erect permanent structures in an otherwise dynamic environment. When an object is placed in a city’s public space, it is up to the citizens to choose how they wish to interact with it. Those in charge of our public spaces should acquiesce to the mutability of the city, as skateboarders have done already.

Daryl Mersom writes a blog about skateboarding and architecture. Follow Guardian Cities on Twitter and Facebook to join the discussion