Public Commons

Part of Playgrounds removal 2004

From our Newsletter, May, 2004. For some years now, the playgrounds of Toronto have been removed at a breakneck rate, some to be replaced, some left bare. This virus began with the day cares, moved to the schools, and then began to affect the parks. It is caused by the city's wholesale adoption of the revised playground standards of the Canadian Standards Association. This is a voluntary association of over 90% manufacturers, with a bit less than 10% of its members from government or from industry associations. Oddly, almost half of the membership Canadian Standards Association is not Canadian at all. There are many members from Taiwan, for example, and Hong Kong, and the U.S. - most of them, of course, manufacturers of goods that they want to sell us. The Parks and Recreation Division has by now spent about $6.5 million to do these removals and buy new equipment, with an additional $11 million going to day cares for the same thing.

The consensus is that most of the new structures are physically and imaginatively unchallenging to children. More and more, we see children scratching in the sand with a stick, beside these expensive new playgrounds - because making patterns in the sand is still more challenging than playing in these dull "safety playgrounds." Maya Litman, a mother of three young children and a play analyst, has taken on the task of slowing down the destruction of what she calls "much-loved playgrounds." She had now collected more than two thousand signatures of people who want to resist the current playground fad, and she's hoping to present the signatures to Mayor David Miller before the end of May.

Maya has a list of the next playgrounds scheduled for removal - she says the Grange and Hillcrest are due this year and we're due next year. But city staff person Jamie Warren, who is in charge of this process, says we won't be up until 2006. This buys us a little time to work against the disappearance of our "much-loved" play equipment.

Maya is very knowledgeable about all stages of this replacement disease. She says that one of the painful ironies of the "safety playgrounds" is that they're not very safe anyway - teachers are telling her that more kids get hurt now than formerly, maybe because they have to take silly risks to get any excitement at all, playing among these dull structures. Old Kind and New Kind...

Old Kind: Huge, complex, great for all ages. Encourages imagination and creativity. New Kind: Colourful, but boring. Tiny, unstimulating and unchallenging.

Making the Playground Safe Editorial: November 9, 2004