Ground Up City - The Place of Play, Liane Lefaivre

In this article, Liane Lefaivre makes the case for the importance of playgrounds in the urban landscape, and how over the years, architects and city planners have tended to ignored them completely. She starts off by taking us back to the Dadist movement where many artists tried to bring in more play and humor into their work. We are given examples of how play is an integral part of every artists work. Jean Piaget, for example viewed play as a key element in human cognition and the growth of intelligence. He is responsible for the learning by play approach which he found more interesting than rote learning.

Most of the article discusses the playgrounds of Amsterdam, and how the contributions of three people, Van Eesteren, Aldo van Eyck and Jacoba Mulder, helped transform its urban landscape. In a remarkable success story of participatory design between the Municipal Department of Public Works of Amsterdam and its citizens, the total number of playgrounds rose from 30 in 1947 to over a 1000 by 1968. Lefaivre goes on to discuss the lives of each of these three visionaries and how their experiences helped them achieve their goals.

Jane Jacobs countered Aldo van Eycks fantasy of playgrounds and transforming children. She argued, and quite correctly so, that the abundance of the small playgrounds interwoven into the urban fabric, brought the children out onto the streets. Children would spend most of their time on the streets while the traditional parks with all their play equipment and running grounds became sites for criminal activities.

In conclusion, Lefaivre reemphasizes the importance of the Amsterdam playgrounds and how they managed to create a sense of community. It was arguably the most successful design tool of the twentieth century and still is largely ignored only because play was, and still is, not taken as seriously as it should be.