About Us
What do you get when you mix 20+ years of skateboarding with pure urban planning passion? You get RISK Urbanism!
Our Approach
Risk Urbanism challenges many prevailing assumptions in urban planning — especially the tendency to minimize uncertainty, control behavior, and eliminate friction in public space.
Traditional planning often prioritizes safety, predictability, and control to such a degree that it unintentionally strips cities of vitality, spontaneity, and agency — especially for youth and subcultures. We take the opposite apprach.
Why 'RISK'?
We chose the word Risk because play, creativity, and genuine urban engagement always involve risk: physical, social, political, and emotional. Skateboarding, our core focus, is a perfect example. It is an activity that thrives in public space not despite risk, but because of it. It requires balance, awareness, adaptation — qualities that are also essential in good urbanism.
Best Skate Scenario
We believe that skateboarding is a vastly underutilized and underappreciated ingredient to building a great city. It’s a mobility tool, it’s a low-cost fun-machine, it’s a brilliant and healthy way to express creativity, and it’s a unique way to relate to your urban environment.
Together with your city’s skate community and non-skating residents, we can find the ‘best skate scenario’ for your city!
Cameron Ohlson, MSc
Founder
Cameron Ohlson, MSc, is an urban planner and skateboarder from the United States and has since made his home in Groningen, The Netherlands. He combines his experiences as a lifelong skateboarder and deep knowledge of both Dutch and International planning practices to solve issues related to the integration of urban sports, mobility, and child-friendly cities.
Cameron has a bachelor’s degree in environmental policy from Western Washington University and a master’s degree in society, sustainability, and planning from the University of Groningen.
