I was reading a book (about modern values) which was describing some newer playgrounds in Britain. It said some of them were designed in a non-traditional way, including metal containers where children could (more) safely light fires or areas where they could practice sawing twigs and nailing things with provided hand tools. Although both of these might seem like terrible ideas, no injuries or unfortunate events were supposedly reported. The fact one immediately things of more dangerous outcomes says something about our society. Yet it is difficult to imagine such a playground in Canada, and likely more so in the United States.
Indeed, there was recently an article on moveable furniture in public parks. Apparently it is a worldwide trend to have metal chairs in parks that people can move. Research supposedly shows if people in parks have access to moveable furniture, they will establish control by moving it - possibly into circles or couples or shade. But thefts are surprisingly rare. Which is possibly the first thing that occurred to you when you read about the idea. And which also says something about the media and the mores. The idea of moveable furniture, not firmly bolted down, recently came to Toronto after it became popular in other progressive cities.
What is the most dangerous piece of playground thing you remember?
Is it a good idea to encourage fire pits and use of hand tools? Are these areas too safe or overprotective these days? (A recent lawsuit nearby is suing a toboggan place…)
What do you think of the idea of moveable furniture in public parks?
Eh, could go either way. I certainly tried to light fires on the school playground with a magnifying glass when I was in 2nd/3rd grade (or thereabouts).
I have a fairly dim view of humanity, so I am not sure what I would think of that. Of course, our parks around here are fairly small and often unoccupied.
My fear was always that ride-on sat on big springs. I’ve seen kids rock it feverishly and their heads jerk and I can just see front teeth flying out or a broken nose. Not to mention the neck of the poor kid.
Then there’s the platform that goes around by kid power. Little kids are always flying off those.
The slide, yeah.
Climbers.
Swings.
Any rope things.
Sand.
Yeah, I was always kinda paranoid about playgrounds.
Moveable furniture wouldn’t last long around here.
When I was growing up the city playground a block from my house, in addition to the aforementioned slides, swings and other risks to life and limb, was surrounded by a 6’ high chain link fence with swinging gates made up of thick iron pipes. These were great to stand on and have a friend swing you back and forth. One time I had climbed up high enough that the top pipe swung back and hit me square in the forehead. I carried a scar for years (rumors of resultant brain damage were greatly exaggerated).
About dangerous playground equipment, I remember something like this from my childhood, but it was all sturdy steel; even the seats. When nobody was riding it, you could push it away from you, it would return and you repeated the process until it was rebounding hard from the other end of its range of travel. For small children, it was great fun to get all that steel into motion and to maintain the violent, thumping movement. But when the playground was full of kids, the more distracted ones would sometimes wander within range and get nailed in the head by the steel seat.
Here’s a gift link to a New York Times article about a similar sort of playground on Governors Island in New York. Regarding the origin of the idea, the article says, “The Danish landscape architect Carl Theodor Sorensen was bothered by the same trends over 70 years ago. He noticed that children in Copenhagen during World War II preferred to play in abandoned lots and construction sites than on the well-appointed asphalt playgrounds that had been built for them.”
My FIL had hoarding tendencies, and would buy anything if he “got a deal on it!” He had a large property in Michigan with a private lake, and all manner of stuff would appear down on the beach, “for the grandkids.” One day 2 old HS driving simulators appeared - and the kids never touched them - until they disappeared some years later.
Another time, he apparently “got a deal on” some old playground equipment, and the beach became home to 2 old pipe jungle gyms, and 2 metal death slides. The shorter of the 2 slides made its way into the water. I remember one summer my son (now 33) spent countless hours climbing the slide, counting the 6 steps as he climbed, and sliding down into the water. Good memories!
Anyone else play “smashed potatoes” on the slides? One kid would slide down sideways, with their legs hanging over the side, and would stop at the bottom. The next kids would all slide down the same way, as hard as they could, trying to slam into the first kid and push them off the end of the slide. Good clean fun!
In Toronto parks, most park benches are already in the shade and are suitable for a couple of people. And many picnic tables are in some kind of shade as well. So if you replaced those with an equal number of moveable items (that have the potential to get clustered together rather than evenly distributed), it doesn’t seem like a great leap forward.
I’m generally a fan of letting kids play with dangerous stuff in relatively safe ways. So i think " safe place for kids to start fires" is a great idea.
And I’ve seen moveable furniture in parks, and like it.
Excerpt from article below. Note that they consider the uneven distribution of furniture proof of success.
This philosophy stems from a pioneering study done in the 1970s by urbanist William Whyte. A keen social observer, Mr. Whyte had noticed that when people encountered moveable furniture, they invariably moved it.
The new spot was maybe a bit farther into the shade, or more in the sun. Closer to a friend or farther from the guy with the boom-box. But sometimes the shift was infinitesimal, with no obvious physical advantage. It was just about exercising autonomy.
“The possibility of choice is as important as the exercise of it,” Mr. Whyte wrote in his seminal book, The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces.
The idea of moveable chairs was embraced as a civilizing influence by the revitalizers of Bryant Park, which at the time was too dangerous for many New Yorkers to feel comfortable visiting. And although this was only part of changes that also included more entrances, better maintenance and more things to do in the park, it was the symbol that stuck in the public’s mind.
“People saw that the chair was there, they can control it, it was well designed, it was attractive, it was appealing, it wasn’t being stolen,” Andy Manshel, the former associate director and counsel of the Bryant Park Restoration Corp., said in an interview from New York.
“So all of those components told people, this is a space in which I can predict the behaviour of others, and I don’t feel like I may be physically threatened.”
I’m thinking of something like a church group moving 60 chairs inside a large park into one small area so that they can have an outdoor service, and then I have no seating options in the rest of the park.
Note that Toronto’s new Love Park is tiny (compared to something like Sunnybrook Park or High Park), so it doesn’t make a big difference if chairs are moveable or not.
In the UK we had a piece of playground called the ‘Witch’s Hat’. It was a conical, rotating seat that could carry dozens of kids, and had a phenomenal angular momentum at full speed. My niece has a permanent scar which she obtained from a witch’s hat back in the early eighties.
Dangerous for the rider as well. We had a swing set in the back yard when I was a kid and my brother liked to get on the glider swing alone, pumping furiously until it was banging into the upper bars of the structure. I will never forget the day when the weld attaching the handle to the glider’s uprights came loose and my brother went sailing through the air, landing on the edge of the vegetable garden.
What is the most dangerous piece of playground thing you remember?
In elementary school, we had this rusty geodesic “Terrordome” thing.
A few years back I took my small kids to an old school playground built in the early 90s in my home town. It had the traditional scalding sheet metal slides, smelly giant truck tires, splintery wood railroad ties, rusty chains and so on. The kids loved it and were very disappointed when it was replaced with the more modern plastic and Nerf equipment.
Is it a good idea to encourage fire pits and use of hand tools? Are these areas too safe or overprotective these days? (A recent lawsuit nearby is suing a toboggan place…)
That seems dumb to me. Although, when I was in the Boy Scouts we learned all about fire and using saws and knives and other tools safely.
What do you think of the idea of moveable furniture in public parks?
Is this something you have seen or used?
I feel like they would need to be too heavy to move very far and unsuitable for use in a college dorm or 20-somethings apartment.
There was a recent article in the Toronto Globe about designing playgrounds. No fire. No saws. But they did talk a bit about the difference between hazards, which in cautious Canada definitely includes those, and risk. The designer thought hazards need to be eliminated. But risks, like having to take a big step between two structures high above the ground, is to be encouraged. He said this is what makes things enjoyable.
Even so, his views seem controversial to some. Our elementary school built an enormous three-story climber thing. It even had ziplines and places where you could jump ten feet down. At the time, it was very well liked and was fêted in the local news as innovative. But it was gone ten years later.
Many years ago I was doing my first shift of playground duty at a new school. A kid was doing that very thing and got smacked on the bridge of his nose. I immediately took him inside, and felt very fortunate that a parent who was also an EMT happened to be in the office.
I don’t remember any especially dangerous pieces of equipment when I was a kid but one subtle difference is that the playground was often asphalt or gravel as opposed to today where it’s a government mandated depth of engineered wood or shredded rubber mulch or poured-in-play rubber surfacing. So the climbing dome wasn’t really higher but it hurt more if you fell off.
In fact, many of the climbing structures these days are much higher than when I was a kid, but they’re encased in rope nets to keep the kids inside and on safer surfacing.