A skatepark is a purpose-built facility designed for the use of skateboards and other wheeled devices, like bikes, scooters, wheelchairs, and inline skates. The best skateparks are made from concrete, are designed and built by specialty skatepark firms like California Skateparks, and feature unique designs that distinguish one skatepark from another. Skateparks also serve as a social space where youth meet up to skate or just hang out together. Skateparks are designed to be active spaces for skaters and other wheeled users, but anyone can enjoy watching the activity in the skatepark.

To get a public skatepark built in your hometown, you will need to build support for it. This means talking to your friends, teachers, local business owners, and others throughout the community. You and your fellow supporters will also need to take your idea to your local leaders—your city, town, or tribal council. Educate yourself on the benefits that a skatepark will bring to your community and share that information with anyone who will listen! You can learn about the benefits of public skateparks and how the process works at www.skatepark.org. Download their Skateparks Best Practices guide and get started on your new skatepark! Also check out this helpful video with tips from a local advocate who got a new skatepark in his town.

Skateparks provide a safe space for skateboarders and others to ride and share their passion for their sport. They are an active space where users can enjoy the many health benefits of skateboarding, including the many important social-emotional benefits. A skatepark is a space where youth come together and build community. It's where skateboarders and their friends know they belong, and where other members of the community are also welcome—where they can come and enjoy watching this amazing activity.

Trusting the design and construction of your skatepark to an expert specialty firm like California Skateparks is critical. Combining the input of your local skaters with our experience designing and building hundreds of recreational and pro-competition skateparks around the world, our design team of skaters, artists, and engineers create skateparks that are unique to your community. The California Skateparks team has created skateparks on every continent, including everything from private backyard bowls to international competition courses.

A professionally designed and built concrete skatepark is important for the following reasons:

• Provides a safe challenging place for skateboarding and other action sports.

• Serves as an alternative to team sports, helping develop motor skills and balance in youth and the young-at-heart. Playgrounds are provided for younger children, but for older youth who don't participate in team sports, often there is nothing.

• Attracts visitors (skatepark enthusiasts and spectators) who enjoy skateboarding and similar action sports. When people visit a skatepark, they typically spend money at local businesses!

• Makes communities more youth-friendly and sends youth the message that they're accepted and valued members of the community by creating a place for them to call their own and a creative outlet to express themselves.

• Promotes a culture of health among youth, helping curb problems of inactivity and drug abuse. According to addiction researchers, including the National Institutes of Health, the most common reason given by youth for drug abuse is boredom.

• Provides opportunities to host skate jams and competitions, presenting skating in a format that non-skateboarders can understand and appreciate. Skateboarding is a great spectator sport!

• Empowers youth by involving them fully in the process of establishing the park, enabling them to work with community leaders, learning how government works and how they can become more active citizens.

• Presents opportunities for "hard to reach/non-joining youth" to get involved in the community and fosters creativity, as each skater develops their own personal style and skills.

• Provides social opportunities by bringing different ages and social groups together, encouraging interaction and an appreciation of each other. Professionally designed and built skateparks also provide families a safe and enjoyable place to skate together.

• Encourages youth to interact independently and develop socially, learning how to take turns and help each other learn new tricks.

• Mitigates (but doesn't replace) street skating, protecting private and public property from damage and reducing police time required to follow up on complaints. For example, after their skateparks opened 75% of communities surveyed by the City of Calgary in 1998 reported a significant reduction in street skating. In a survey of police departments nationwide, 85% of officers interviewed by The Skatepark Project reported a significant decrease in complaints about skateboarding after their local skatepark opened.

• Reduces pressure on hospitals as a result of reduced injuries from skating on rough and uneven surfaces and in high-traffic areas (i.e. street-skating). According to Health Canada, only 5% of skateboarding injuries take place in skateparks. In the U.S., more traditional sports like basketball produce far more injuries per capita than skateboarding, according to the National Consumer Product Safety Commission.

• Is proven to be a healthy physical outlet with significant mental health benefits, according to researchers at the University of Southern California (USC).

• Provides economic benefits. According to Discover Los Angeles, "Skateparks are tourist attractions in their own right, and they're given celebrity status thanks to the pros who have helped design them." It's no wonder that so many of the celebrated skateparks in the greater Los Angeles region and around the world were designed and built by California Skateparks.

Skateparks that are properly planned, located in highly trafficked areas, and include features that attract both young and older skaters have proven to be safe havens for youth, particularly in communities with higher levels of gang activity and youth violence. According to a study by The Skatepark Project, skateparks are not magnets for crime or bad behavior—in fact, quite the opposite. Kids at skateparks are generally not exposed to more foul language or illegal activity than other locations where youth congregate. And skateparks that include bowls and other features that attract older skaters benefit from the regular presence of adults. In Long Beach, California, for example, police officers cite the city's many skateparks as locations they aren't concerned about—the kids there take care of each other. The key is learning how to plan for a safe and successful skatepark (do that at skatepark.org), and ensuring it's designed and built by a specialist like California Skateparks.

Skateboarding is one of the fastest growing activities in the United States with almost 9-million participants (www.statista.com). Most skaters ride wherever they can—in the streets, sidewalks and parking lots, and just about anywhere they aren't chased from.

Community groups and civic leaders have identified skateparks as an answer to the lack of suitable places to ride. In recent years, hundreds of municipalities have come to embrace the recreational and societal benefits of skateparks, and three new skateparks are built every week in the U.S.

Skateparks, even the more challenging ones, are far safer than kids rolling through busy streets, and there is a lot less damage to picnic tables and other items throughout the community that skateboarders use as obstacles when they ride. In addition, when parks are built right—with local skater involvement throughout the process and a qualified firm like California Skateparks designing and building the skatepark—the kids develop a sense of ownership and pride that translates into good stewardship.

Skateparks provide a place for skaters to go and practice the sport they love with friends. It gives them the opportunity to improve, to achieve small victories on a daily basis, to grow more confident in themselves and their own abilities, and allows them to apply these lessons to other aspects of their lives—whether in school or at work.