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Playspaces & Environmental Justice

Rooted in a multidisciplinary research framework, Parklet is an exploratory prototype intended to provide an accessible, materially sustainable, and developmentally valuable outdoor play resources for children and families. Bearing in mind the inherent limitations of physical playspace production, the Parklet newspaper is a scale-agnostic alternative to physical parks and playgrounds.

Grounds for Play

Article 31 of the UN Convention on the Rights of The Child states that “every child has the right to rest and leisure, to engage in play and recreational activities appropriate to the age of the child and to participate freely in cultural life and the arts.”

According to The American Academy of Pediatrics, increases in depression and anxiety are linked to a lack of unstructured playtime, and it recommends that children spend at least 60 minutes each day in open-ended play. (Ginsburg et al, 2007).

There has been a well-documented decline in children’s playtime. In 2004, children spent 50% less time in unstructured outdoor activities, compared to the 1970s. During the same year, children ages 10 to 16 spent, on average, only 12.6 minutes per day in vigorous physical activity (Juster et al. 2004).

Outdoor Play Matters

A child’s experiential connections to nature early on have been suggested to predict environmentally conscious behavior in later life (H.D. Wallace, 310). Furthermore, studies have found a positive correlation between the number of outdoor activities children have participated in and their feelings of concern and care for the environment later on (Wallace, 310).

Building Eco-Literacy

Identified Barriers to Equitable & Inclusive Playspace Access

Urban planning and environmentalism in America has been notoriously insensitive when confronting issues of race, class and disability. Urban development often manifests in ways that disproportionately deprive marginalized communities of resources, access, and agency. Alongside the densification of American cities, urban green spaces have become one such coveted resource.

Playgrounds are demonstrably not “one size fits all”. Stick-and-post playground design rarely incorporates a diverse range of affordances; a ladder is a ladder, and a slide is a slide. When play spaces fail to address the needs of all children, both a fundamental violation of rights and an environmental injustice materializes.

Children have traditionally been excluded from the design process, and only recently have designers begun making efforts to incorporate children and their needs in planning decisions “Playgrounds are places made by adults, for children. Always with the hope of harnessing their play to a specific location” (Lange, Alexandra, 45).

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“In our work-centric culture, in a deep-rooted sense of play as trivial, just messing about, with no serious rationale or quantifiable outcomes, and of children and childcare as part of predominantly domestic and therefore lesser worlds” (Kinchin, 2012).

Thank you to the Narayanan Family Foundation

This research was a project of the Excellence in Landscape Design award at UC Berkeley and funded with the generous support of the the Narayanan family. Many thanks as well to Kate Smaby for all her help as my research advisor.