BUILDING THE STUDY

In recent years, playgrounds in the US have undergone a design renaissance. Significant investment, as well as experimentation in play features and site elements, have created ideal laboratories to explore what makes a great space to play. We defined these as innovative playgrounds (example on left).

We selected three innovatively designed playgrounds, built within the last ten years, in ten cities or metro areas: Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati, Denver, Houston, Los Angeles, Memphis, New York, San Francisco, and Seattle. This ensured a representative sample of regions within the US (see page 8). Urban areas were selected as the playgrounds were larger, more plentiful, and had a wider diversity of play experiences to analyze.1

The innovative playgrounds chosen met at least three of the following criteria:

(a) a variety of surface types;

(b) naturalized and planted areas designed specifically for play;

(c) open-ended structures that did not dictate play sequences;

(d) loose, movable equipment; and

(e) not comprised solely of traditional post & platform structures.

The innovative playgrounds were then matched with a traditional post and platform playground (example on page 9) that was built or renovated within the last ten years. We additionally matched the playgrounds by neighborhood household poverty level, racial/ethnic demographics, and socio-economic aspects of the surrounding census tract, for a total of 60 playgrounds.

1 For more information on site selection, see Playground Design and Physical Activity, American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 2022.