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"IF CITIES ARE NOT MEANT FOR CHILDREN, THEY ARE NOT MEANT FOR CITIZENS EITHER. IF THEY ARE NOT MEANT FOR CITIZENS THEY ARE NOT CITIES."

"Cities are chaotic and necessarily so. They are also kaleidoscopic. This should be accepted as a positive credo before it is too late. Order has no function, on this side of evil, other than to make what is essentially chaotic work."

Aldo van Eyck


…Children have an urge to explore, touch, manipulate and experiment with their world in order to understand it. This has had important influence on the design of many pre-schools and kindergartens but not much on public playgrounds. The value of play for creativity is also little recognized by those who plan and design public settings. But when adults in New York City recall their own play experiences, they recall creatively adapting the environment to suit their needs – inventing their world. When children have the freedom in space and time to play with one another, they find ways to pass on their culture to peers through games, song and dance, but also to transform it…

 …Public playgrounds continue to be relatively sterile environments that allow only for running, jumping, climbing and swinging. To support a wider repertoire of play, children need diversity and manipulability in their environment. But it is difficult to create playgrounds with “loose parts” when there is no staff to maintain the environment (Nicholson, Simon (1971), “The theory of loose parts”, Landscape Architecture Vol 62, No 1.). Playgrounds of fixed manufactured equipment are designed for ease of maintenance, and in response to fears of liability. Sometimes “protecting children” is an excuse for laziness or for the unwillingness of adults to provide a good play setting for children…

[Roger Hart, Containing children: some lessons on planning
for play from New York City]

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