The city that stopped chasing

For thirty years, skaters were chased off the squares. One city just stopped.

After seven years of back and forth, the City of Bordeaux has legalised skateboarding across the whole of its public space, UNESCO quays included. In October 2025, the CONNECT festival brought together close to a thousand figures from the global skate scene around rideable sculptures, exhibitions and street sessions. Skateboarding is set out there as urban culture and a planning tool, no longer a nuisance.

It's a shift. The concrete, the street, the use, the trace: what was always endured becomes recognised. The legitimacy wasn't shouted, it was earned.

The ground as territory

France has more than two thousand public skateparks, from the Prado in Marseille to the EGP18 in Paris, and the wave of investment since 2024 hasn't let up. But the real ground is still the street: a bench, a ledge, a curve of concrete read differently. Skateboarding transforms the city by looking at it another way.

That reading is what we share. To see a trace where others see street furniture. Keep what works, ignore the rest.