Creating Custom Playground Work In A Manufactured World

The following is intended to open discussion over how to
survive being bullied by the commercial playground industry

Necessity for Playgrounds

Once upon a time, not so long ago, communities were our playgrounds where children could freely explore their environment under the watchful eyes of neighbors and family. The foundations of community are quickly disappearing and children are now presented with contained play areas as their only outdoor play experience.

• 65% of households with children are working (including both parents and single parent households)
• 63% of children under the age of five are in a regular daycare arrangement, 56% of them in non-relative care
• 79% of the US population is living in urban areas

Manufactured Equipment as a Model for Playground Safety

It is a common perception that a playground is composed entirely of commercial equipment intended for physical outdoor recreation. Safety guidelines and industry standards keep the realm of possible play features narrow by placing undue liability on play features that do not succinctly follow them. Furthermore, the interpretation of these guidelines by insurance companies and state licensing agencies often results in a “one size fits-all” strategy which puts impossible limitations on anything that is not found in a playground catalog. The legitimacy of guidelines is also brought into question when:

• There has been no follow-up study on whether safety guidelines have decreased the occurrences or types of injuries on playground equipment.
• Strict adherence to safety guidelines often leads to the permanent removal of play equipment or ignoring real safety concerns due to the inability to pay for new equipment or surfacing.
• Unquestioned legitimacy of guidelines to create “safe playgrounds” overshadows a greater need to concentrate on managed-risk methods to expose kids to their limitations.
  
  Customization of Playgrounds (discussion)
  
  
• How does one introduce real-world experiences in a controlled play environment?
• Is it possible to return to custom built playgrounds that predated the commercialization of play?
• Can there be a symbiotic relationship between commercial equipment and custom play features?

Playgrounds, Less Interesting Than Dirt

By Chris Kahn, Sun-Sentinel, Education Writer


Andrea Levin is grateful that Broward County schools care about her daughter's safety. But this year when they posted a sign that demanded "no running" on the playground, it seemed like overkill.

"I realize we want to keep kids from cracking their heads open," said Levin, whose daughter is a Gator Run Elementary fifth grader in Weston. "But there has to be a place where they can get out and run."

Broward's "Rules of the Playground" signs, bought from an equipment catalogue and displayed at all 137 elementary schools in the district, are just one of several steps taken to cut down on injuries and the lawsuits they inspire.

"It's too tight around the equipment to be running," said Safety Director Jerry Graziose, the Broward County official who ordered the signs. "Our job was to try to control it."

How about swings or those hand-pulled merry-go-rounds?
"Nope. They've got moving parts. Moving parts on equipment is the number one cause of injury on the playgrounds."

Teeter-totters?
"Nope. That's moving too."

Sandboxes?
"Well, I have to be careful about animals" turning them into litter boxes.

Broward playgrounds aren't the only ones to avoid equipment that most adults remember. Swings, merry-go-rounds, teeter-totters and other old standards are vanishing from schools and parks around the country, according to the National Program for Playground Safety.

"Kids aren't using them the way they're supposed to," said the agency's director, Donna Thompson, who led a national effort to get rid of animal swings two years ago. "I'm pleased that a lot of these are disappearing."

In Miami-Dade County, public schools don't use a lot of traditional equipment, including swings and sandboxes. In Palm Beach County, some schools have swings, but they're no longer included on newer campuses because there's not enough space.

In their place, a lot of playgrounds now are inhabited with clusters of bright, multi-use contraptions with names like "Ed Center" and "Platform Climber Composite Structure." They're lower to the ground than their predecessors, coated with plastic and engineered for safety.

"We could do a lot more if we didn't have to watch our back every single second," said Graziose, who has led a playground safety committee for 17 years. "We sometimes get a letter from the attorney before we even get an accident report from the school."

Thanks, litigious busybodies! So, what do the kids think? The girls tried out the horizontal ladder and balance beam for a few minutes before settling on a game of stacking plate-size dirt chunks into a neat pile. "Making sand," explained Kristin Gonzalez, 6, as she crushed one in her hands and sprinkled the bits over the pile.

Bartleman, the only board member with children in elementary school, created a subcommittee this year to suggest ways to redesign school playgrounds. Safety is important, she said, but there's got to be a way to make Broward's playgrounds more interesting than dirt.

"I would have never thought about this until my daughter came up to me one day and said `Momma, I hate going to that playground,'" she said.

Hmm, and I wonder why kids are getting fatter? I mean, if they're NOT ALLOWED TO RUN ANYMORE. It seems like there might be a connection here . . .

The newest playgrounds are usually filled with equipment engineered in accordance with U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission guidelines. They might expose schools and parks to fewer lawsuits, but they're not as challenging as the previous generations of playgrounds, said Joe Frost, an emeritus professor at the University of Texas who runs its Play and Playgrounds Research Project.

"Play is one of children's chief vehicles for development," Frost said. "Right now it looks like we're developing a nation of wimps."

Say it ain't so, Joe.

Designing Playspaces

In a playspace, a child can engage himself in a multitude of free-play activities. A playspace can occur anywhere and at anytime. But when a child's environment is altered by urban development and other modern constraints, his play activities become limited to specialized areas we recognize as playgrounds. Although a playground can never become a replacement for making sand castles on a beach or walking through the woods, it needs to at least provide some of the experiences encountered outside a fenced perimeter.

Even in Hawaii where a natural environment abounds, children are constrained to institutional forms of play. Public schools and city parks do very little to engage kids in more than the most mundane physical activities. The typical layout of a playground is the presence of one or two composite structures that only a child under the age of five may find challenging. Fighting, boredom, and reckless behavior on the play yard is often a result of a short-sighted vision of how to design an outdoor playspace. (see Hawaii Playgrounds)

As people begin discarding playground catalogs and start acknowledging their own intuition as well as a plethora of research in child development, a new image of playgrounds is beginning to emerge. These playspaces have a greater reliance upon landscaping than on equipment. They are evolving spaces which adjust to the interests of kids. They are also investments of dedication and concern rather than investments of scarce funding.

The following are some of the guiding principles used when designing an enriched play environment:

Access and Circulation - Is there adequate room for children to move with ease and engage in play events without excess obstruction or crowding?

Diversity of Play - Can children find a wide range of group and independent activities to capture their immediate and future attention?

Play Challenges - Are features used in the play space appropriate for the age group it is intended for? Is there a wide range of challenges for children with varied abilities?

Multiplicity of Function - Do the features in the play space lend themselves to a variety of uses?

Attraction - Do children find the entire play space inviting? Is there sufficient attention to natural materials and green spaces?

Protective Measures - Are children visually accessible? Are potential injuries considered & adequately addressed?

Longevity - Will the play space last and what maintenance schedule can be applied that will realistically be followed?