With youth activity levels declining and obesity rates increasing, considerable effort is being undertaken to improve the physical fitness of Canada's young people. Yet youth have identified one form of physical activity that they enjoy: skateboarding.
Society's response? Usually outright bans on use or restrictions that seriously impede skateboards value either as play or Active Transportation. In most Canadian communities skateboards are not permitted, usually by municipal ordinance, on sidewalks, on streets, at schools, on buses, in the downtown, in businesses - almost anywhere where young people might actually want to use them or carry them between uses. Even when special reserves are created - skateboard parks - these are often located on the edges of communities and unconnected by routes that skateboarders may use to access them.
A recent event in Fredericton NB, where a 25-year old businessman who uses a skateboard to commute to work went to jail rather than pay a fine for illegally using (i.e. on a city street) his skateboard for transportation, indicates the possible need for authorities to rethink their regulations regarding this mode of transportation and play of the younger members of society. It also suggests, to me, the vlaue of identifying Active Transportation, rather than walking or biking, as the principal term of reference for non-motorized transport.
Following are a number of recent articles about skateboarding around the world. The first few profile the event in Fredericton and some of the reaction it has generated.
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