Abstract(s)
Starting in the 2000s, there has been a rise in youth-led appropriation of
public spaces in Hanoi, Vietnam. Through case studies of skateboarders
and traceurs (practitioners of parkour) in two of the city’s formal public
spaces, we explore and analyze the tactics deployed by these young urbanites
to claim a part of the characteristically overcrowded and socio-politically
restrictive public spaces of the Vietnamese capital. These case studies show
that, by seeking to access public spaces for their new activities, skaters and
traceurs have had to confront multiple sets of rules, imposed by not only
the state, but also corporate actors and resident-driven surveillance. We
find that skateboarders and traceurs deal with these forms of control largely
through small-scale, non-ideological, and non-confrontational tactics. As
a result, these youth practices have become normalized in Hanoi’s public
spaces. These findings broaden the discourses on everyday urbanism and
social-political transformations in post-socialist urban contexts, and shed
light on the ways in which contemporary youths engage with the city.