Billions have been spent on public parks in the last couple of decades. Why, then, does it seem that most of the good playgrounds date from the 1950s, while the new playgrounds as beautiful as they are boring. New playgrounds use fancy materials, have a maximum number of tubes, and every shaped slide you can imagine. But the new slides are slow and tubes are only good for crawling through. The materials bounce but somehow don’t challenge you.
Older playgrounds, in contrast, have great swings, merry-go-rounds, fast and straight slides, spinning things, tetherball, seesaws, and glorious monkey bars. All of these seemed to have fallen out of favor with the playground elite.
The key issue, of course, is safety. Thus are we constantly lectured on the dangers of all really good playground equipment. The government seems to have a whole slew of publications on the subject. And yes, the new equipment does seem safer.
But the problem has to do with incentives and moral hazards. Is it possible that the safer the equipment, the more dangerous the forms of play the children engage in? And is it possible that the more dangerous equipment inspires some level of fear and caution in kids, and teaches them to be more careful? Maybe, in the end, the older equipment is safer after all. If fingers can get pinched, kids watch their fingers, for example. If they can fall, they learn to balance themselves carefully or not go there. They learn not to spin the merry-go-round as fast as it can go. They develop a sense of caution on the old equipment, but do not learn the limits on the new equipment.
I’m unaware of any research into the subject but here is someone who seems to agree. It would be typical of government safety regulators to only consider the objective conditions but not the subjective human response to them.
