Serious Playgrounds

Forget basic swings and slides. Innovative playgrounds designed to appeal to today's kids can cost upward of six figures

by Douglas MacMillan

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With an immersive, high-tech world of video games, cartoons-on-demand, and online social networking at their fingertips, the youth of today are spending less time recreating in the great outdoors. The seesaws, swing sets, and jungle gyms languishing in the playgrounds of yesteryear can't compete for the attention of this budding, screen-wired generation.

But all hope is not lost, say some promising new minds in the resurging play equipment manufacturing industry. From high-end designers to proactive nonprofits, a variety of fresh voices in the field are working to give little Johnny compelling reasons to come out and play.

A San Francisco-based play-structure designer and self-proclaimed child at heart, Barbara Butler turns kid fantasy into backyard reality on a daily basis—for a pretty penny. For about $4,000 to upward of $240,000, Butler and her team of "play professionals" will custom-build the fort, castle, tree house, or playground of your child's dreams. Before she gets to work, she always sits down and listens attentively to the children's own ideas and looks over their fantastical sketches—to her, valuable blueprints.

Inclusive Creations

One project which ran for $135,530, dubbed "Hillside Hamlet" called for an arrangement of three separate towers connected by bridges, a crow's nest, ladders, rock-climbing walls, secret passages, swings, and a massive escape slide that drops into a sandbox. The client, a generous grandmother of 14, was delighted to have a centerpiece for her young ones' entertainment, physical recreation, and social development.

Playgrounds are typically thought of as liberating spaces open to all, but the founders of Bloomfield (Conn.)-based nonprofit Boundless Playgrounds will tell you they can be divisive walls that segregate those children with physical and mental disabilities. The group has taken action by working with community organizations and playground-equipment manufacturers to build state-of-the-art recreation facilities accessible and fun for able and disabled young people alike.

"We studied the whole supply chain for the playground decision-making [process]—who buys them, who funds them, and how those decisions get made," says Amy Barzach, executive director and co-founder of Boundless Playgrounds. "We found there were a handful of companies who impact most of the playgrounds in the country."

Too-Safe Nation?

In 1997, Barzach issued an open request-for-proposal to the industry, feeling out how open these companies would be to charting a new course toward more accessible equipment. Enthusiastic responses came immediately from six major national manufacturers, including Little Tikes, GameTime, and Play & Park Structures, who then helped the group look at modifications to existing products which would serve the needs of children with disabilities.

This month, Boundless Playgrounds built its 100th inclusive play space in Fort Campbell, Ky., and the organization says it's just getting started. Costing communities between $30,000 and $1 million, their playgrounds consist of challenging activities like rope climbs, ladders, and slides, as well as fitted special-need activities like back-supported swings, elevated sandboxes, and towers that can be accessed by ramp.

According to Susan Solomon, author of American Playgrounds: Revitalizing Community Space (UP of New England, 2005), the playgrounds of today lose out to tech-toy recreation because they fail to provide challenges. "You don't want to advocate that kids get hurt, but you want to advocate that there's a small possibility of risk," says Solomon. "Risk is important to kids because that's how they learn. Rather than deal with risk, Americans want to eliminate it."

Natural Encounter

Her book highlights a number of innovative play spaces in the country where challenging activities and natural, tactile experiences were the focus of design rather than cookie-cutter plastic tubes and ball pits. One such example was the Children's Garden of Enchantment in San Francisco's de Young Museum, a space designed by landscape architect Walter Hood for the museum's October, 2005, reopening.

Young visitors to the garden find sensory activities that encourage a connection between imagination and the natural world, such as a fog field, native floral arrangements, and scalable sculptures. "Childhood recreation shouldn't be dictated by equipment," Hood says.

Will playgrounds of the future follow in this naturalist vein, or will they begin to mimic the technology-saturated environments where kids spend a majority of their day? For the first time, it seems equipment manufacturers have stuck their heads in the sandbox and opened this challenge up for public debate.

Click here to see some of today's most innovative playground designs.

MacMillan is a reporter at BusinessWeek.com in New York.