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9. Planning for the Unplanned
- Fordham University Press
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CHAPTER 9 PLANNING FOR THE UNPLANNED Play can occur only in a condition of freedom, because it is above all doing what you want to do, when and where you want to do it. Richard Dattner, Design for Play1 hanging out with the Hungry March Band one afternoon in 2001, I asked one of the saxophone players, Emily, how she felt about letting her nine-year-old son, Sam, run around BEDT as they practiced. Was she worried about broken glass, rusty or sharp edges, hard surfaces, or something more unsavory lurking in the margins? “You must think that I am a terrible mom,” she replied, somewhat defensively. After thinking about it some more she said, “I’m concerned about rats—I’ve never seen them but I know they are there.” As with many vacant places in the city, particularly those along the waterfront, there were a few rats at BEDT, though not nearly as many as when the warehouses still stood. “Once, a dog scared him,” she remembered. Sam had been at nearly every rehearsal I attended that year. No one could fault Emily if she could not find an affordable babysitter; New York is an expensive place to raise children. He was a friendly, inquisitive kid and had lots of 242 planning for the unplanned energy but was never really too wild and usually stayed close to the band. He was also very interested in the music and was developing an aptitude for the drums, another incentive for him to stay close by. Little more needed to be said and I thought Emily was through explaining, but my question had provoked some deeper reflection: The reason I bring him down here is because it’s one of the only places where he can run around and be himself. He can draw big things and when the skateboarders were here, it was fun for him to watch what they were doing and do all the jumps on his bike and things like that. Once he used all the scrap metal and all the crazy stuff out here to make a supercomputer. He spent a long time—he picked [up] bricks and nails and paint fragments—you could say that he handled a lot of broken glass. It was fun for him. I think it’s nice to come out here and not feel you’re being watched—and for a kid too—it’s like a place that you can really be yourself. While Emily was worried about Sam’s physical, intellectual, and creative development, those responsible for building and maintaining places for children in the city have long held a different set of concerns. Municipal parks and recreation departments have stressed safety and security above all else, creating play environments that keep children away from objects, people, or situations that can potentially cause them harm.2 Unlike the concrete of the Slab, most of New York’s playgrounds feature padded surfaces, play equipment rigorously tested for safety, and few loose objects that can be swallowed or pierce the skin. Most New York playgrounds are also enclosed by a fence, keeping them socially removed from the city around them. Rules posted at the gates of city-owned playgrounds prohibit adults without children from entering. It is hard to argue with the logic that adults who are not attending to children have no business in a playground. Yet child abductions have always been a sensational but rare occurrence in New York and elsewhere, even when the city was less safe.3 Fear of harmful objects, surfaces and structures, and potentially dangerous strangers may isolate children from some of the richer physical and social experiences of the city. Surely the homeless men who sometimes kicked a soccer ball around with Sam while his mother practiced would not meet the litmus test of the secure playground. There was a time when many designers, developmental psychologists, and scholars argued for something quite different from the safe playground of today. Born in the urban aftermath of World War II, the adventure playground [3.238.87.31] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 11:18 GMT) planning for the unplanned 243 movement advocated for play environments that offered children the freedom, the challenges, and the physical and social dynamics found in both natural and urban settings .4 The movement purportedly began when a Danish architect noticed children in Copenhagen happily playing on vacant lots and construction sites with the tools and materials they had found...