UK-based researchers say that “freedom to play” is too often omitted from urban design decisions.
For children, play is more than just simple fun. Decades of research from fields such as neuroscience, psychology, educational studies, pediatrics, and anthropology has demonstrated that it is essential for the development of their cognitive, emotional, physical and social skills. Play is so important to childhood that it is enshrined in the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child. And yet, our cities – where the majority of the world’s children live – are not built to with those rights in mind.
Opportunities for play tend to be confined to constructed playground spaces, with streets and roads largely dedicated to moving and storing vehicles. Independent mobility options are scare in rapidly urbanizing areas. In many instances, where car-free urban public spaces are available, they are specifically designed to exclude play.
“Ultimately, we’re not embedding the principles of the child-friendly city into our planning,” says University of Sheffield Professor Helen Woolley, a landscape architect and expert on children’s outdoor play environments. These principles – established by the UN in 1996 – aim to put children’s rights and well-being at the center of a city’s policies and decisions. According to Woolley, while more than 50 cities have signed up to it, few have actually reached their full potential. “What we see are lots of excellent individual projects in cities, and there are countries like China that have play-based policies at different levels. But I can’t name a place that gets a gold star for everything.”
She continues, “When we talk about play in cities, we need to look beyond constructed playgrounds. It’s about making the city as an entity more playful. Giving children access to play on their route to school, or in the city center.” Adults also benefit from more playful urban spaces – the presence of water features, street furniture, green spaces, and public art make environments more interactive and have been shown to improve well-being.
Pandemic play spaces
During the COVID-19 pandemic, as regions instituted travel restrictions, urbanites got a rare glimpse into what their streets could look like with reduced vehicle traffic. With roads and parking lots all but silent, and a growing need for safe outdoor spaces in which to relax, exercise and gather safely, local councils and city managers began to rethink the spaces left behind by the absence of cars. And in many cities, play became a key focus.
Dr Michael Martin recently published a study that looked at four examples of temporary play installations established in response to the pandemic; pop-up pedal parks in parking lots across Sydney, a play street in central Paris, play equipment and street furniture in Belfast, and a colorful piazza in a school parking lot in Milan.
“These play spaces fulfilled what we call the five pillars of play,” explains the University of Sheffield urban designer and planner. “They allowed children to play freely, play with objects, play pretend, play games with rules, and play physically.” Interviews with people who led and used the short-term play spaces revealed that they enabled “children to enjoy urban life in new ways”, and “bolstered civic access for underrepresented users of urban spaces”, as well as “creating inter-generational encounters”.
Despite these successes, Martin also showed that there was a widespread hostility to the temporary handover of urban spaces for children’s play. “Something I’ve found really shocking in my work is the level of creativity adults will use to restrict children’s access to space,” he says. “The whole point of these projects was that they’d only be short-term, but again and again we saw protests from groups who were opposed to their existence.”
In Sydney, elderly car users – described by one interviewee as “well-heeled naysayers” – successfully lobbied local councilors to reduce the total space for play, from the entire parking lot to one aisle of parking. In Paris, businesses on or adjacent to the play street – which closed to traffic for just two hours per day – “feared losing their refined identity and clientele” as a result of the presence of children. Local residents complained about the noise and hung signs protesting the project. In Belfast, unhoused people along with local teenagers who had previously been the main users of the park “resented the presence of the pop-up play space”. This ultimately led to vandalism of the equipment and irreparable damage to the playing surface.
“I think one of the key messages that came out of that study was that we really need to work more directly with the politics of play,” says Martin. “A common statement from dissenters was ‘children can go elsewhere.’ The reality is they can’t, and they shouldn’t have to.”
The response in Milan was different. What started off as one project in school parking lot became a municipal program of vehicle-free school streets and piazzas, called called the Piazze Aperte (Open Squares) Initiative. “Even as COVID started to decline, they just kept going,” says Martin. “They’ve done 30+ spaces in different neighborhoods to temporarily remove cars and replace them with tactical urbanism solutions. Very simple things, like planters and furniture, and they always include a ping pong table, because they say that brings people together. What started with one project, Milan is now doing across the city.”
What’s wrong with playgrounds?
Earlier this year, Woolley and Martin were co-authors on a study that mapped the provision of children’s playgrounds in England. “We wanted to understand the difference between deprived communities and more affluent communities in terms of play space, because we had a sense that a lot of resources go in one direction,” says Martin. In doing so, they managed to establish the country’s first credible, national-level database of playgrounds. And the results were stark.
They measured a “substantial inequality in provision”. In some settlements, playgrounds were crowded, with five times the number of children per playground, when compared to other settlements with similar populations. Children living in deprived settlements had to travel further to reach a playground, and those playgrounds tended to be smaller than those in less deprived areas. London was the exception, where playgrounds were plentiful and easy to reach, and there was no clear pattern between playground size and deprivation.
The type of play space matters too.
“Playgrounds have become the default position – the accepted solution – in urban planning,” says Woolley. “But they tend to be very formulaic.” Woolley refers to traditional playgrounds as ‘Kit Fence Carpet’: a kit of fixed play equipment; a fence to surround it, and a carpet of rubber. While such installations can help promote physical play, they often ignore the other types of play.
Back in 2013, Woolley designed a tool to measure the overall play value of different spaces in the UK. She found that that ‘natural’ play spaces which incorporated vegetation, changes in levels, materials like wood, water, sand, and stones, and loose or moving parts provided significantly higher play value than a typical playground. This reflects findings in other regions too, with less structured play spaces shown to lead to greater creativity and independence.
“We know these more natural spaces offer better outcomes for children,” she says. “So, it’s really not good enough to just install a kit fence carpet and think, ‘that’s play sorted’.”
Martin agrees, and points out another issue with playgrounds. “We’ve seen some shifts toward truly inclusive and accessible play spaces, which is positive. But what we haven’t seen much of is an understanding that play is a concept that changes with age. Traditional playgrounds typically service children aged 5 to 12. Teenagers and tweens have different needs, and we know that teenage girls are fundamentally left out of the conversation. Giving them public hangout spaces is a big part of that.”
He continues, “Children of all ages have a right to occupy and be present in public spaces. We need to get much better at offering a spectrum of opportunities for play across the built environment. Right now, we’re seeing some really fundamental failings.”
