Skip to main content

Spain and Children's Playgrounds!



I just arrived back from Spain a few weeks ago and already miss that wonderful place. What a beautiful and amazing country. I visited ten cities in just about two and a half weeks. When I arrived home, I felt as though I needed a vacation from what was supposed to be my relaxing summer trip.

What clean and friendly cities all throughout southern Spain! The food was less exciting than I had hoped. No real variety or flavor. What a disappointment...

And of course, I could not help myself and inspected a couple of playgrounds while I was there.

Wow, what a horrific site! Safety, what safety? It was a disaster.

Most of the play areas were in poor condition and not maintained as well as the city sidewalks. In Madrid the sidewalks get cleaned every night with power washers at roughly 12:30am (Madrid begins to get dark at about 10:00pm during the summer and dinner and everything is just later in Spain) but I digress, sorry…

The equipment as I stated, was not maintained after it was installed and the safety surfacing was the Poured-In-Place type. However, it was not completed with an adequate pour that would meet the minimum use zones nor a thickness that would meet the critical fall heights.

Let me explain further. The play structure needs to have a minimum safety padding around the play structure that will “catch” the child in case of a possible fall. The recommendation from the Consumer Product Safety Commission is 6 to 8 feet. I usually recommend a more stringent requirement of a minimum of 8 feet from the play structure. The Critical Fall Height of the play structure in our industry is typically measured from the platform height of the equipment. I again, use a stricter point of view here and look for any possible areas where a child may be able to gain access to, and will use this as a Fall Height Criteria. The Head Injury Criteria is to simulate a hypothetical child’s head falling to the surface. The purpose is obviously to minimize a serious head injury. So the play surfacing thickness underneath the play structure needs to be adequate enough to minimize this potential critical injury.

The overall play environment was poor and not stimulating for children. I could speak volumes of what it did not have and if you look at the "Collective Safe Play Environment" list, I think you can come up with your own conclusions. A picture is worth more than a 1000 words. So I have attached a few pictures.

Spain, like the United States, needs to spend more time in providing safer play environments for children. For both countries it starts from the bottom with Industry Experts, Community Leaders and Parents putting pressure on the local municipalities. Both countries need to create effective leadership councils that consists of the Experts, Community Leaders and Parents that can create educational guidelines, funding, and finally, enforcement to have municipalities take this seriously. The well being of our children is at stake.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Playground Crime Common, Mostly Untracked

It's amazingly unfortunate how far some people will go to do damage to a playground. Police blotters in communities all over the world, affluent and underprivileged alike, tell the tale. Countless horror stories fill the record with news blurbs that frame playgrounds as crime scenes, such as this Aug. 2 report by WOKV television in Jacksonville, Fla. in which a 20-year-old man was found with a "life-threatening" gunshot wound and "the playground was closed off with crime scene tape as investigators searched for clues." In line with the absence of solid, enforceable playground design and equipment standards, crime statistics on schoolyards and public recreation facilities simply aren't kept by any level of government. So the research is scattered and purely anecdotal, except for a recent "experimental" attempt by the U.K. The children's British Crime Survey published in June recorded more than 2 million incidents of theft and violence agai...

International Efforts to Build Safe Playgrounds in War Zones

It would be hard to find a rational person who would disagree with the idea that children all over the world should have safe places to play. Organizations such as UNICEF and The Playground Builders Foundation have worked to provide children in war-torn nations with safe, accessible playgrounds. Playground Builders, a Canadian nonprofit charity, has established a business "model [that] involves the use of a generic playground design and local construction, based on a competitive value bid system," according to the organization's website. "This simplified process ensures many playgrounds throughout conflict areas can be built effectively and efficiently. These special places provide safe spaces for laughter, hope and interaction for war-entrapped children in unstable and poverty-stricken areas such as Iraq, Afghanistan and the Palestinian Territories." UNICEF's common practice is to build or rebuild schools and playgrounds in places ravaged by warfare....

Thinking "Green"

Environmentally friendly playgrounds are becoming increasingly popular and prominent. As the "green" label has become a standard line in marketing throughout all kinds of business sectors, the same is evident among playground equipment manufacturers. A few examples of more sustainable playground elements include recycled tires in safety surfacing, recycled plastic benches and playground equipment recycling programs. Another common practice in recent years has been replacing asphalt surfaces with grass and natural surroundings. "There are plenty of new opportunities to transform decaying asphalt playgrounds or vacant lots into natural play areas," Richard Louv, author of “Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder” wrote in a 2007 New York Times opinion article. "Researchers at the University of Illinois, exploring people’s relationship to nature, have discovered that green outdoor spaces relieve the symptoms of attention defic...