What is the Standard for Playgrounds?

Playground. Let’s look at the word. Play, something kids do to whittle away the time. Ground, the earth we walk on, in all its variations. Why add “equipment” to this naturally occurring set of circumstances? It’s all a question of standards. An acquaintance of mine was asking me the other day if there was a park up on Hardwicke Island on the British Columbia coast where I have built a log cabin. I looked at him like he was a bit strange. Why would anyone need a park on an island abounding in natural forest, beaches, birds, deer, critters of every description and a wide variety of geography?

Of course we have parks to protect and provide natural environment for numerous reasons. We add equipment to playgrounds to enhance the circumstances for play. We recognize that a simple grassy lot is often not sufficient for our children. In our urban settings we have to add back a quality that would probably be there if there were plenty of varieties of landscape to play on. And the scale of play changes as kids grow older. Kids need more room and more variety, they run faster, cover more ground and are in need of social games and more organization such as sport. So we design more equipment and build more complex facilities such as sports fields to provide a blend of opportunities. It gets complicated.

The point of my little exercise here is that there is a contrast between my island getaway where play emerges from the kids, the adults and the natural environment, versus the more urban or suburban environments where we try to build special places to play. We adults have to be very conscientious to make these play opportunities available right where kids live. That means parks and playgrounds right down the street.

And where does the community come in? How do we ensure that our community planners cooperatively plan school, park and private playground opportunities? If this is done, the children will get bigger and better play areas that are located where they are needed.

This brings me full circle in my demonstration. Up at my island cabin, the few people that come up there bring with them their sense of play and the environment provides the opportunities. As our circumstances become more urban, we must make a special provision for play and the quality of life, because, as the little guys (the Ferrengi) on Star Trek might say “it is not profitable” to build pathways, green spaces, parks and playgrounds.

As a parks or playground advocate you can speak up and raise the priority of these facilities. Playgrounds particularly need vocal advocates now as they are being rebuilt in recognition of playground standards. Playground standards emerge from huge volumes of accident statistics.

Play is the spark plug in a child’s life. If we must provide areas for this play, why not advocate for a gold standard in your community?