Mel Yuan for Brunswick

It was playgrounds that started it all for me. Pushing my preschool kids around the neighbourhood made me realise how poorly Merri-bek’s (then Moreland’s) playgrounds compared to neighbouring councils’. The Play Space Strategy 2016-2020 was a welcome step forward. However, it’s 2024, and the council needs to be assessed on how it delivered on that strategy.

The strategy has flaws. How children play, their freedom, the supervision they expect, ideas of risk and safety, and what gets them out of the house have changed radically since the concept of playgrounds was devised approximately 100 years ago. The pandemic has also changed our expectations of open space.

We need to go back to the drawing board and re-assess what makes for good outdoor “play” and consider our local infrastructure as a series of interconnected systems, not just dots on a map. Creeks, walking & cycling paths, sports fields, “adult gyms”, seating & congregating spaces, places with loose play materials, school playgrounds, skate parks and plazas are all opportunities for play spaces.

It’s economically unsustainable to “rip out” play equipment when playgrounds need renewal. Instead, we need to take an additive approach to areas of formal play equipment.

It is simply not relevant in 2024 to think that children older than 7 are going to their local playgrounds without adult supervision. Children as young as 10 simply drop out of using playgrounds due to the lack of challenging play options.

Playground consultations have been severely lacking in the past and almost always suit adults, not playground users – children. The only way to test a playground is to have kids on it. We need better observational evidence of what is being used in public play spaces, and how, by whom. If you spend time in playgrounds you will be amazed what you see.

Many playgrounds are simply an aggregation of playground catalog equipment dumped in tan bark and left for 30 years. Many popular and familiar items are simply boring to most children. Sometimes a pile of mulch and a running tap are more entertaining than plastic things that wobble.

Our attitude to safety and risk has resulted in sterile and boring play areas, which children are not allowed to venture out into, alone. Children have largely disappeared from our streets, except when accompanied by adults. There are almost no public spaces available for teenagers, with adults taking over spaces like skate parks. A rebalancing is needed.