Play space for children

Following Wednesday's government announcement about the destructive withdrawal of funding for community playground schemes across England, here's a letter in today's Guardian by Liz Kessler, (in turn responding to George Monbiot's article about common space, play and trees on housing estates):

Many of these estates are surrounded by large areas of bleak open space, all too often dominated by cars. By redesigning these spaces, planting them with trees and flowers, providing allotments, minimising the impact of vehicles, and integrating opportunities for play, they can indeed be transformed. I recently worked on such an estate and when the re-landscaping was completed an elderly resident said: "It's like a cork bursting out of a bottle. I had no idea there were so many children cooped up in these flats."

Comments

[Buildingstrongcommunities.wordpress.com]

These "tower in a park" are also very common in Toronto, Canada; we have the second highest number of highrises in North America, spread across the city and often far from tranport. Reaching the end of their first life cycle, our outgoing Mayor led a tower renewal initiative [http://www.towerrenewal.ca/] during his tenure. It aimed to recreate the space around these buildings and to improve their ecological footprint. We'll see what our new mayor does.