The impact of playground spatial features on children's play and activity forms: An evaluation of contemporary playgrounds' play and social value

Highlights

• The contemporary playground does not have to lack playability and sociability.

• The selected feature categories can determine a playground's playability and sociability.

• The strength of a feature's influence varies by playground zone type.

• The supplementary features and the alignment of playground zoning with a sequence of play increase the potential.

• There are factors determining defunct zones: redundancy/duplication, functional/visual isolation and lack of loop activity.

Abstract

The play environment influences child behavior, but the strength of this influence and its variation across playground zones remain unknown. These questions are addressed by an observational study of child behavior in ten contemporary public playgrounds which includes play zone identification, on-site observations, statistical evaluation of zone playability/sociability and analysis of correlations between feature categories and play zone ratings. The results indicate that selected feature categories can determine a playground's playability and sociability, the strength of a feature's influence varies by playground zone type, there are two key features which increase zone type potential (supplementary features and alignment of playground zoning with the natural sequence of play development), and factors determine defunct zones (redundancy/duplication, functional or visual isolation and lack of loop activity).

Thus, contemporary playgrounds can have strong play and social potential, and the existence of specific features affects a playground's potential regardless of its type.

Introduction

Many contemporary playgrounds consist of look-alike, isolated pieces of equipment in a monoculture of grass (Herrington & Studtmann, 1998) which have no relation to context. It is not a surprise that they are widely criticized for their limited stimulation and activities (Cohen et al., 1978, Frost, 1992a, Lynch, 1961), for being developmentally inappropriate (Frost and Klein, 1983, Frost et al., 2001), for being predictable and boring (Beckwith, 1998, Beckwith, 2000, Moore, 1989), and for attracting children only when such playgrounds are new (Langendorfer et al., 2008). But there is more – most of today's playgrounds, defined by colorful multi-structures with platforms, steps and slides that are placed on safe rubber surfaces, not only fall short of stimulating a wide spectrum of play types, but also do not act as social places. The basic expectation of a playground, i.e., to create a playful and social environment for children, their families or even the local community, is not met at all or only to a small degree. This may suggest that the concept of the contemporary playground of a “McDonald's model”-type, described by Eric Schlosser as “the most commercial end of product development” (Solomon, 2005 p. 82), is definitely a dead end. It is not a surprise that many researchers have begun to question the whole concept of ‘playground’; especially since most of children's play does not occur on playgrounds (Quigg, Gray, Reeder, Holt, & Waters, 2010). The playground's usefulness is also limited since the sites for them are often chosen without any careful studies of location and context, which causes problems with the playground's accessibility (Veitch, Salmon, & Ball, 2007). As Cunningham and Jones (1999) argue, the playground is a confession of the failure of city planning. Still, it has dominated play spaces in the Western world, thus gaining a strong position in the market and city landscape, which makes any and all research exploring ways of maximizing playground play and social potential necessary. Perhaps we should come back to the old concepts of playgrounds, e.g., gardens for children (Jekyll, 1908), to the idea of a designer's playground from the 1970s, we should look for inspirations in the works of Aldo van Eyck and M. Paul Freiberg (1970), and follow Colin Ward's (1978) suggestion that the whole city should be a play space. As Wortham (1990) suggests, “contemporary play structures can be an important part of a true play environment” (p. 98), but for that to be achieved an in-depth study of the relations between spatial features and children's behavior on playgrounds is needed.

The research presented in this article aims to uncover if the contemporary playground can be a true play and social environment, and how to increase its play and social potential, i.e., its playability and sociability.

The work was guided by the following questions:

• Is there any relation between selected spatial features and children's behavior at playgrounds?

• How strong is the influence and is it constant for the playground's site?

• Can we identify critical features and design solutions that can efficiently enhance the play and social potential of a playground?

In order to find these answers the research focuses on children's behavior at contemporary playgrounds and explores the relation between selected spatial features, the playground's design and children's play patterns in the context of a playground's playability and sociability.