If we understand playgrounds as places where children have complex social encounters, challenge themselves physically, develop new skills and experiment with independence and exploration, then we understand that playgrounds are akin to schools. Playgrounds teach, and different sorts of playgrounds offer different lessons. But too many of our playgrounds are the same. Playgrounds are failing to challenge our children, and failing in the same ways. “It is no longer easy to find a playground that has an element of surprise, no matter how far you travel,” Hanna Rosin notes in The Atlantic.

Here in Evanston, playgrounds tend to follow a predictable pattern. They segregate age groups so that children of different ages don’t share the same equipment. They are made of plastic and metal, so they get hot in the summer and slippery in the winter. They don’t have any hiding places, and they’re very safe – sometimes so safe that they’re boring. These playgrounds are the product of a national trend, born of litigation and fear, that has developed over the past several decades. Critics of this trend have suggested that these “safer” playgrounds are not actually safer. “There is no clear evidence that playground safety measures have lowered the average risk on playgrounds,” says David Ball, a professor of risk management at Middlesex University. Research has also suggested that “safer” playgrounds can inhibit the development of essential skills. In a recent study published in Pediatrics, the researchers observed that strict safety standards were leading to less play. Boring playgrounds, as Sumathi Reddy observes in the Wall Street Journal, are contributing to the epidemic of childhood obesity. Conventional wisdom on playground safety, in other words, offers more convention than wisdom.

The current plan to demolish the Penny Park playground and replace it with a “safer” plastic composite playground that offers good sight lines, no places to hide and separate play spaces for children of different ages is concerning to some of us parents and educators because we fear it will eliminate the very characteristics that make Penny Park so uniquely valuable. Families from all over the city (and beyond) come to Penny Park because it offers a play experience, and thus a learning experience, that we can’t find anywhere else in Evanston.

At Penny Park, it isn’t unusual to see both toddlers and tweens playing within the same structure, or on the same equipment. Why is this important? Close contact with people whose abilities are different from their own offers children a social challenge and a roadmap to citizenship. It encourages children to learn how to watch out for each other and how to navigate other people’s needs.

Penny Park is one of the only playgrounds in Evanston where it is possible for children to play hide and seek. Most other playgrounds have nowhere to hide. Easy visibility is convenient for parents, but it isn’t developmentally desirable for children. Nor is it fun. Part of the magic of Penny Park is that children can experience some invisibility, a luxury they get very little of. Within the safe confines of a fenced and gated park, they can experiment with autonomy. Where better for this to happen?

The wooden mazes at Penny Park offer children the freedom to explore a world from which adults are largely excluded. This small space for autonomous play fills a great need, as professor of early-childhood development at Queen Maud University College Ellen Sandseter has observed. Children need a play space, she says, “where they are left alone and can take full responsibility for their actions, and the consequences of their decisions.”

Of course, some parents prefer playgrounds with no places to hide and play spaces that separate age groups – playgrounds like that can be found at Mason Park, two blocks north of Penny Park, at Alexander Park, two blocks east, at Smith Park, four blocks north, as well as at other parks all over Evanston. Parents who want a rubberized play surface can find it at Mason Park, Smith Park and Lawson Park, among others. Lawson Park also offers a fully accessible play structure.

This isn’t to say that Penny Park shouldn’t be modified to improve accessibility for people with disabilities. Accessibility is an essential priority. But that can certainly be accomplished without entirely demolishing the playground. The city has already chosen Leathers & Associates to update the park. Leathers & Associates no longer builds with wood, so Penny Park cannot be rebuilt on the same design by Leathers & Associates. But Leathers & Associates recently worked with a community in Canada to preserve the unique design of their wooden playground, originally built by Leathers & Associates in 1993. “In order to conform to current safety standards and guidelines, and to save costs, a complete renovation rather than a rebuild was chosen as the best course of action,” Leathers & Associates writes of St. Andrew’s Playground. The resulting rehab is an amalgam of the older playground and newer features. Why not invite Leathers & Associates to preserve the current design of Penny Park while replacing structures that are no longer sound, adding desirable features like therapy swings, and creating greater accessibility? Let’s keep Penny Park unique and make it a playground where even more of us can learn together.

Truly,

Eula Biss

Lecturer