Private Playstructures

The decline of public play is a theme of this blog. This author touched on this when trying to figure out why he disliked the plastic play structures so common in backyards:

Children's play equipment and the decline of the American yard
at Slate

...Lurking somewhere, either peeping out from the back or nakedly displayed right in front, some form of children's play equipment, typically in plastic and typically in some bright primary color, will probably be splayed on the grass.

I'd like to raise just one question about this picture of domestic bliss: How often do you actually see a child playing on, or near, one of these devices?

....the fear of injuries and their litigious consequences forced the closing, or banal "post-and-platform" retrofitting, of many playgrounds.
...
"Told incessantly to be mindful of lurking dangers and the people who might inhabit the outdoors, [paranoid] parents often defer trips to public spaces. Going to a playground becomes too exhausting for a parent to contemplate." And so instead of a communal play space, each yard becomes a (rarely used) playground unto itself.
....
.... "To a four-year-old, though, the space made by the vaulting branches of a forsythia is as grand as the inside of a cathedral, and there is room enough for a world between a lilac and a wall."

Bruce and Hamilton Playground

Sunday the weather finally broke warm, and on the way home from canvassing, we stopped at this peaceful playground in Northside. The play equipment is so-so, but the site is nice with trees and a nice perimeter fence. Lots of kids out as the sun was setting.

 

Good Swings Have Long Chains

 

Who designs a swing with a four foot chain? Not much is accomplished on such a swing other than a kind of dizzyness. Then also, they are usually, too far off the ground.

We have a freind who put a long long swing on an oak tree. Wow, it is so pleasant and the kids love it. Even the little kids. It isn't any more dangerous, as far as I can tell. So why don't we have more of them? Perhaps, because a long swing either needs to be on a tall tree, or on a more expensive piece of play equipment.

The swingset at the Eden Park Overlook are a holdout. Unfortunately Cincinnati Recreation Commission probably has them on a "to remove" list. Last year, there were some long-chained swings just like these in Mt. Airy Forest, but they were removed this past spring and replaced with mini-swingsets.

Swing with short chain:

 

Bellvue Park swing 2004:

 

Lunken Playground

We stopped at the Lunken Airport playgorund, which is a very good playground. There are usually lots of kids, it is fenced, has lots of mature maple trees for shade, and has play structures for all ages of kids:

 

There are lots of play structures, and shaded benches for parents:

 

One family was flying a kite. Is that a good thing to do at an airport?

Early Playground Photo

 

There was a movement 100 years ago to get children off the street and on to "safe" play structures like this.

see saws allowed by CPSC

While researching another topic, I was surprised to see that the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) which regulates playground equipment does not discourage see saws. Why then have they disappeared from every playground? Fear of lawsuits?

 

Construction Play, Men at Work

One of the things that gave me the best childhood memories, was playing in the woods near our house. We cut trails, built forts and made tree houses.

On the other hand, one thing I missed growing up, was seeing grown men build things at their work. We lived, like most Americans amongst lots of other houses, and no businesses nearby. My glimpses of the work world were things like the mailman and garbage man.

My son is so fortunate to see men at work everywhere he looks. I think this is important. However, I would also like him to have the opportunity to play at construction, like I did in the woods. We have talked about building a tree house for example at his grandpa's house. We have also had the idea of surreptitiously constructing play spaces in the public park. During our walks in several city parks we have come upon things like this built by other kids. There are bike trails and ramps in the woods at Ault Park, and we have found rope swings and play forts in other city parks.

There is a movement to build playgrounds where kids can play at construction. They are called Adventure Playgrounds and apparently they are popular in Europe, but are rare in the US because of liability concerns.

I suppose the illegal playhouses built in the backwoods of city parks are eventually removed by park employees, but at least these woods will always be here, unlike the ones I grew up playing in, which were bulldozed long ago.

Playground Litter

Good thing we got that rubberized play surface so kids don't bruise themselves:

 

Rules Rules Rules

 

I've seen worse signs, but this is pretty bad. Who writes this stuff, and who ever reads it?

Crumpled Slide

 

Hanna Park
[where: McMicken and Dunlap Streets, 45202]

A Good Playground

 

Ault park
The playground here has two swing sets, and two play structures, all located under the shade of large cypress trees. There is a winding path, seating for parents, drinking fountains, toilets, and picnic tables; all in good working order. Hard to find a Cincinnati Recreation playground half as good anywhere on the west side.

[where: 3600 Observatory Avenue, Cincinnati, OH 45208]

Privacy in the city

Jane Jacobs spends a lot of time writing about the need for the city to accommodate strangers. When I first read this, I thought she was giving too much attention to a minor topic. I mean, you can always pull your shade, right? But the longer I live in the city, the more I see that the issue is much deeper than that.

People want the freedom to become friends with only the people they choose. They do not want to share all their private lives with all the neighbors. A good city neighborhood allows people to know lots and lots of acquaintances, but importantly allows those people to also have private lives.

Perhaps I am being to abstract to make much sense, so I will try an example:

The playground. At a well designed and well-attended playground, your child can meet and play with lots of other kids, and if you wish you can strike up a conversation with other parents, while they sit in the shade and watch; or you can sit and mind your own business. However, if play is limited to private areas such as yards, courtyards, or even to inside, then the parents are forced closer than they want to be to the other families. Families in this situation may choose to stay isolated, rather than open their private space to all kinds of strangers.

Residents of small towns, are forced to be intimate with neighbors. This could be good, but it could also be bad. See, I would rather choose who I become intimate with.

Suburbanites have the choice of following their little kids to the neighbors yard, (if you want to supervise them), or you can drive them to the local park to play. The real result of this arrangement is that families pick neighborhoods that are full of people very similar to themselves. Then, forced intimacy is more likely to be ok.

The advantage of city life is the huge variety and degrees of friendships that are available. Because you are not forced into intimacy with everyone, the range of people you feel comfortable living next to is much more diverse.

This Play Unit Designed for ....

 

Our local "play unit" is in terrible condition. The small plastic slide is punctured by a post, because some really big kids jumped on the end of it. There are some metal poles around that I think once were play structures. Today, there were some adults drinking out of brown paper bags and lots of hot cheetos wrappers laying around, and no kids.

But when the kids are playing on it they are mostly 2-5 years old, with some 6 and 7 years olds stopping by for a quick slide. Is the sign for liability purposes? Apparently that is why we no longer have see-saws and merry-go-rounds...

Adventure Playgrounds

One pet peeve of mine is the innanity of playgrond equipment. Gladly I am not the only one who sees the senselessness of a completely safe playground with no see-saws and swings with three foot long chains.

Here is a portion of a lengthy article from the Boston Globe on current thinking about playground design.
Read the whole thing. The article is a Must-read.

"There's a real international playground movement taking hold around the world, and it's really very exciting," says David Elkind, a professor of child development at Tufts University and author of the recently published book "The Power of Play."
Nor is it only celebrity designers and architects who are starting to take playgrounds seriously. Here in Boston, a public-private partnership called the Boston Schoolyard Initiative has over the past decade refurbished 61 of the city's schoolyards, furnishing formerly neglected spaces with play structures and greenery. Recent years have also seen the creation of nonprofits, like the MetLife Foundation Parks & Playgrounds Fund and KaBOOM!, dedicated to improving children's access to playgrounds. KaBOOM! has partnered with Home Depot and Kimberly-Clark and earned the endorsement of Senator Hillary Clinton in its mission to provide "a great place to play within walking distance of every child in America."
This pro-playground vanguard, according to the child psychologists, designers, architects, parents and teachers who form it, is motivated by the conviction that play, in a larger sense, is under attack. High-stakes testing has elbowed recess out of the school day, video games keep kids indoors and sedentary, while parents, fearful of pedophiles and abductions, no longer let children roam freely.
All in all, the average child's life is more regimented than it was 20 years ago, with more young children in day care, more lessons and rehearsals and practices, and less free time. The fact that communities are getting serious about play, proponents hope, means leaders recognize the extent to which it is endangered in modern society.
At the same time, this reexamination of playgrounds is triggered by the conviction that, in the United States in particular, playgrounds have become rather unfun -- designed with only safety in mind, they've lost the capacity to excite or challenge children.
Playgrounds have always been places where the need for free, even rambunctious, play bumps up against parental fears about safety. The new playground advocates are trying to find a better balance. "The history of playgrounds," says Roger Hart, director of the Children's Environments Research Group at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, "is a history of containment."
The country's first permanent playground, in New York City's Seward Park, was built in 1903 for children from the nearby Lower East Side tenements. According to Adrian Benepe, commissioner of New York City's Department of Parks and Recreation, early American playgrounds "grew out of social workers trying to provide safe places in overcrowded slums." Tenement children played in the streets and on piers, sometimes being run over by streetcars, sometimes drowning in the East River.
But what concerned the Progressive reformers as much as children's safety, according to Roger Hart, who was also a consultant to the Imagination Playground, was the thought that by running wild in the streets, immigrant children weren't learning the sort of values that would make them upstanding, hard-working Americans. "There was this ideological split between those who argued that children would learn what they needed just by playing in the streets, and those who wanted to put them in playgrounds," Hart says.
The Seward Playground wasn't very different from what we think of as a playground today. With structures to swing and climb on and a running track encircling them, it served as a model for decades.
Safety concerns eventually remade the playground, according to Susan Solomon, an architectural historian and author of a history of American playgrounds. In recent decades, she argues, fear of personal injury lawsuits has shrunk the playground. Slides and swings today are lower, and therefore slower, than before. Raised platforms are girded by railings, and monkey bars are practically nonexistent. "The see-saw today," points out Solomon, "is pretty much a horizontal bar that hardly moves in either direction. It just kind of jiggles a little bit." School playgrounds in Broward County, in south Florida, now post "No Running" signs.

Teardrop park photos

Project for Public Spaces put Teardrop Park in it's hall of shame for it's isolation and hidden places.

Wikipedia entry on Teardrop Park.