Where are the New Playgrounds?
In the United States over the past few years, there has been a lot more housing developments being built. The one thing that really grabs people with these new places, is the closeness and community feeling they give.
What does not seem to enter into the equation though, is the fact that all the play areas for the children seem to be the same, and have looked the same for the past fifteen years. Do they have just one person that designs the play areas for children, do the same thing all over the country, then go abroad, look at what they have, move it around a bit and then do exactly the same thing. Is there only one company producing swings, slides, roundabouts and funny looking things as climbing frames?
The answer, hopefully, is no. So why do all these parks look the same, do the authorities have no imagination when it comes to the children, or can they just not be bothered?
It would be really nice to go to a town, where a new lot of houses has been built, look around and say, ‘Do you know, I don’t think I have ever seen those type of things in a kids playground’, then go to the other side of that town, look at another residential area and say, ‘My god this play area, looks totally different, I bet the kids love it’.
Most of these so called, playgrounds are not even used by the kids who live around them, the parents wonder why and the authorities just think, what is the point? The point is to use your imagination, whether you are ten years old or forty years old. So to all local authorities out there, ‘Start using your imagination and come up with something different, so our kids can use theirs and not get bored’.
The more different the play areas, the less likely they are to be vandalized, because kids will use them for what they are for, playing on.
