Designing play

In New York, many parks and playgrounds are encouraging children to exercise their creativity, not just exercise.  ”State of Play,” a recent article in The New Yorker (subscription required), explains a new trend of playgrounds that replace fixed structures, like swing sets, with rearrangeable parts, like blocks and flexible tubes.  The idea is that children can direct their own play time:

“At the Imagination Playground, the blue blocks will be augmented by other bits of playable hardware: wooden wheelbarrows, care tires, plastic barrels, and the like, with which children can build structures, vehicles, water channels, and otherwise create an environment from scratch.  The playground, which has cost more than seven million dollars, is intended to encourage something like the spontaneous free play that is offered by a demolition site–minus the rock throwing and the forcible impounding of participants.”