In the three largest cities in Sweden, social movement “scenes”—networks of social movement actors and the places they inhabit—challenge threats such as gentrification. The geography of the built environment influences their ability to lay claim to urban space and to local political processes. In Making a Scene, Kimberly Creasap emphasizes that it is the centrality, concentration, and visibility of these scenes that make them most effective. Whereas some scenes become embedded as part of everyday life—as in Malmö—in contrast, scenes in Göteborg and Stockholm often fail to become part of the fabric of urban neighborhoods. 

Creasap investigates key spaces for scenes, from abandoned industrial areas and punk clubs to street festivals, bookstores, and social centers, to show how activists create sites and develop structures of resistance that are anti-capitalist, anti-fascist, anti-gentrification, queer, and feminist. She also charts the relationship between scenes and city spaces to show these autonomous social movements create their own cultural landscapes. Making a Scene encourages critical thinking about spatiality and place in the sociology of social movements and the role of social movements as important actors in urban development.

As urban development in Asia has accelerated, cities in the region have become central to skateboarding culture, livelihoods, and consumption. Asia's urban landscapes are desired for their endless supply of 'spots'. A spot is assemblage of objects, surfaces and obstacles holding the possibilities to perform skateboarding manoeuvres (tricks). Spots are not built for skateboarding; they are accidents of urban planning and commercial activity; glitches in the urban machine. Skateboarders and filmers chase these glitches searching for spots to make skate video, the currency of the industry and skateboarding's primary cultural artefact. Once captured, performances at Asia's spots circulate rapidly through digital platforms to millions of skateboarders, enrolling spots from Shenzhen, Dubai and Ramallah into an alternative cartography of the region. By focusing on this alternative way of desiring and consuming urban Asia, this book explores the ways skateboarding resets relational and comparative hierarchies of urban development within Asia and between Asia and the West.