Where Should Kids Play?

Many urban environments are hostile to the idea of children freely playing.

There is a school yard across the street from my house. My kids used to go there to play soccer on the Astroturf, practice tricks on the monkey bars, and ride scooters on the pavement. But one day the school changed its policy and began locking the gates. My kids were forced to walk several blocks further to find a school yard that welcomed them.

While they’re lucky to have another option, they are still sad about it. Some days they look longingly at the Astroturf and wish they could just dash across the street to practice their kicks. Alas, it is not to be—and this annoys me. It’s a perfectly good play space that is inaccessible because of the school’s arbitrary decision (never mind the fact that my tax dollars helped pay for it). It feels wrong to deprive all the neighbourhood kids of that space.

The Importance of Play

This raises interesting questions about where kids are expected to play. I think we can agree that play is crucial for child development. Indeed, it’s even enshrined in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, Article 31, which states that “every child has the right to rest and leisure, to engage in play and recreational activities appropriate to the age of the child.”

We can also agree that play has a powerfully positive effect on children. There’s a reason they all go out for recess during the school day, to move their bodies and burn off energy and develop important gross motor skills. Physical activity is said to combat rising rates of child obesity, anxiety, depression, and loneliness. It is said to improve wellbeing, academic performance, creativity, and interpersonal skills. Outdoor play is promoted as a healthy alternative to indoor screen-based entertainment.

Impediments to Play

And yet, most modern urban spaces provide shockingly few options for kids of all ages to play. The play spaces that do exist are aimed at toddlers, preschoolers, and young children. There’s hardly anything for the middle school kids and teenagers. I’ve come to believe that many urban environments are downright hostile to kids, treating them as second-class citizens whose right to move and play freely and safely is constantly undermined by adults’ expectations not to be inconvenienced by kids’ presence.

This takes various forms. Adults want to get places quickly and feel entitled to fast-moving vehicles, so they dislike it when kids play in the streets and obstruct traffic. This is reflected in a recent Ontario news story, where a mom was asked to remove a basketball net from the end of her driveway because a school bus accidentally clipped it—never mind the fact that her four sons would have nowhere to practice and play their favourite sport. (The commenters on Reddit all agreed the net shouldn’t be allowed.) Why have we chosen to let cars have greater priority in residential neighbourhoods than playing kids, I wonder?

Adults don’t want to have to manage risk in the form of injury (to kids), damage (to equipment), and litigation (by angry parents), so it’s considered wiser to prevent access to spaces like school parks, disregarding the consequences to the physical and mental health of nearby children. Our culture has developed a crippling preoccupation with safety—but really, it’s more about protecting the adults from discomfort than the kids, who would benefit hugely from the greater freedom.

Solitary children and teens are viewed with suspicion, their parents accused of neglect, police are called, and weighty accusations are tossed around with little thought to the long-term consequences this might have on a family. There is certainly zero regard given to what a child might be capable of doing (or even need to do) as part of a natural growth trajectory toward independence.

Some adults complain about the noise generated by playing children, taking issue with the shrieks and shouts of glee that accompany their spontaneous games. The current state of urban planning makes me think we live in an anti-child culture, or one that has forgotten how children are supposed to be, and that is deeply troubling to me.

“Sign them up for sports” is a familiar refrain, but this is far from ideal. Participation in organized sports is for rich families. One U.S.-based report stated, “About 70% of kids whose families earn more than $105,000 a year participate in sports, but only 51% of middle-class kids and 31% of children at or below the poverty line do.” As sports become increasingly privatized and public investment shrinks in school-based athletics, many kids are left out. This further undermines efforts toward inclusivity, while doing little to improve kids’ physical health.

Organized sports deprive the non-participating poorer kids of playmates while overscheduling the wealthier kids, and everyone is left with fewer opportunities for the free outdoor play that is now known to be the best kind for kids. This ideal play has been defined as the “3 Frees”: It must be freely chosen, free of charge, and children must be free to come and go as they please.

Where Should the Kids Go?

Kids deserve places to play. They need places to play. They should have playgrounds with loose parts for building imaginative structures, running tracks, basketball and tennis courts, outdoor swimming pools and skating rinks, skate parks and BMX track, swing sets and trampolines. They deserve bike paths, walking paths, and car-free school zones to help them move safely through urban areas without parental supervision.

They should be allowed daily access to designated “play streets,” defined by Scientific American as “residential streets or parking lots that are temporarily closed for activities [and] another affordable way to give kids more chances to run around.”

But an even easier and cheaper place to start is unlocking those school yards. A 2019 report from the Trust for Public Land said that only 10% of U.S. schools let kids use their yards outside of school hours, and that opening these spaces would “give 5.2 million more children access.”

We need to start giving kids time and space to play freely, alone and with each other, and stop throwing up blockades to their play in every direction. It’s not fair at all. If we want kids to be strong, healthy, and happy, if we want them to get off their phones and get outside, then expanding outdoor public play spaces would be a logical place to start.

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