Rethinking the urban playground – can you really be Too Poor to Play?

Leanne Johnson

Play embodies an extension to oneself in terms of their relationship with their sense of belonging to the built environment. The role of play in the built environment thus can embody a contributor towards the metamorphization from space to place within urban studies. The built environment exists as the changing of the natural environment through human activity, thus making play a fundamental characteristic to it. This essay includes a multitude of perspectives and definitions of play, however what is unanimous is that it is a public example of human activity that is being dramatically affected by urban changes such as gentrification. The challenging access to play has led to intersectional marginalisation, contradicting the innocence of play and how integral it is to each child and their socialisation. This essay unearths whether the racial aspects around urban change can affect access to forms of play and the consequences to young black youth when they are restricted in this sense.

Introducing play space as a critical amenity

It is 2019, planning permissions are drawn up. What is designed consists of a multimillion-pound development for housing in London, hoping to rewrite the poor vision on Lambeth by including a variety of affordable social rental space.

The development was award winning, for being family friendly, with common space encouraged to be engaged with by all.

The celebrated development slowly fell into a pit of marginalisation. Designs were altered and those within the social housing tenancies were denied access to play spaces. Residing in a space once occupied by a school becomes comically ironic.

This juxtaposing development was no longer celebrated as an inclusive space fuelled with social engagement but a site of “segregation”.

(Guardian article vignette of the Lambeth social housing developments play segregation. The Guardian, 2019).

The segregation of play space became a hot topic after the development in Lambeth was recognised for marginalising its children. Figure 1 presents a handful of headlines that drew attention to the class-centred inequalities within play in London. Lewis (1966) argues that children’s internalisation of a “culture of poverty” through these experiences forces their play to be largely self-destructive. Society then interprets the play of marginalised children differently. This marginalisation manifests itself into an inescapable process of inequality that a child has been socialised into at a very young age through the impact of play segregation.

With spaces being socially produced through spatial practices (Lefebvre, 1991), play becomes an important extension of the individual’s relationships and sense of belonging in the built environment. Anthropological focus on the built environment dates to when theories of cultural change first prevailed in the 19th century (Lawrence & Low, 1990). These historical debates persisted through the interest in the nature of relationships between society, culture and the built environment (ibid.). The built environment has been discovered to influence and create certain behaviours through multiple conceptualisations. Simply, the built environment is the changing of the natural environment by human activity (ibid.). Play spaces thus become a public example of the built environment, as spaces that facilitate child development. However, what is interesting is that the incessantly changing built environment has reshaped play spaces existence, as they have become increasingly withdrawn from urban life through practices such as regulations or privatisation of public space.

Play is an integral part of socialisation and childhood life. The degree to which this has changed over centuries has put pressure on the way children interact and develop, and has metamorphosed play from an active experience to a thorough concept in urban life. Ferguson’s (2019) examination of grassroots street play likened the lack of freedom for children to play in the UK to ‘battery reared animals’ or ‘high security prisons.’ The controlling force of the present aggressively protects pieces of the future that are embodied fully through the child (Sheldon, 2016). The patronising nature of the concept of adolescence suggests that children lack value in their own right and instead are deemed and valued only as becomings of an adult (Frankenberg, 1992). 

Formalist and functionalist architects encourage these more imaginative forms of play. Adult construction of playgrounds tends to parallel with senseless behaviour (Wood, 1977). This leads to intrigue as to how the playgrounds that have found themselves across London may have impacted childhood life, especially as arguments have developed that state playgrounds are no longer possible due to the social conditions which made it an important civic institution ‘no longer exist’.

Therefore, with a focus on uncovering the importance of play and the arguments around being ‘too poor to play,’ this essay discusses the impact of disadvantaged spaces on the young. It will study how the rise in the urban process has contributed to the decline in play space, and specifically how displacement from gentrification has impacted children. Furthermore, it will try to unearth how this may shape them differently and have adverse effects on their own experience of marginalisation.

Context of Play

“We, as adults, seem to be so obsessed with trying to work out why we play, what it is and what it all means that we perhaps lose sight of the movements of play and the pleasure and joy that moments of play produce”

(Lester, 2019; pp.25).

Lester (2019) emphasises his recognition of the ambiguity the term ‘play’ has on the world. The neurotic attempts to define the word have created a multitude of theories and explanations as to what it is, however, it is not that simple.

Play has been shaped by parallel intellectual projects (Kozlovsky, 2013). Firstly, play is idealised as a realm of freedom. This notion was put forward by Schiller and Rousseau, emphasising what play is not; a realm of labour (ibid.). The project presents play as forms of pleasure. Existing parallel with this is the second project defining play biologically, meaning play exists as an innate instinct of life, in terms of the physical activity it requires as well as the growth it performs on an individual (ibid.). Sigmund Freud was responsible for this initial theorisation, in which he speculated that the pleasure derived from play was founded based on repeating what was once an unpleasurable activity until it becomes mastered (Freud, 1989 in Kozlovsky, 2013).

Albeit tricky to bound the concept to a simple definition, Eberle (2014) instead constructed what he thinks are the key elements to play in the urban fabric:

1.              Anticipation – to prepare for play one must begin to carry out such experience.

2.            Surprise – surprise derives from the anticipation of future pleasure.

3.            Pleasure – this element drives play in the first place. It creates incentives to continue to interact with play as a function of life.

4.            Understanding – the response and reward of play tends to be emotional and intellectual with successful impact on socialisation.

5.            Strength – the sharpening mentally, physically, and again socially.

6.            Poise – an overall state of being that is founded on reward from their experience

These elements are all bounded to idioms of a positive nature, inferring the gravity of play as a crucial urban concept for successful development.

Perspectives on play vary. A non-instrumental stance on play deems it as a negative amenity of life (Woodyer, 2012). Schechner (1993) described it as an activity tainted by unreality and looseness (pp.27). Historian Huizinga (1949) wrote similarly on play. The notion is not a duty or an aspect of real life, and this perception highlighting it as a waste of time (also supported by Caillois, 1961) has given understanding to the unfair neglect of play and the criticisms around the lack of literature around the concept. However what else exists is a more liberal thought. This utilitarian perspective sees the notion of play as a fundamental requirement socially, culturally, cognitively, and physically (Brown & Gottfried, 1985). Therefore, the concept of play is placed as a necessity on the child (Woodyer, 2012). Children are placed on a continuum of life with the fixed point towards adulthood (ibid.). This linear process is fuelled with stages of development, that are encouraged and unearthed by the concept of play (Horton & Kraftl, 2006). This very restricted perception on the child thus makes them incomplete subjects; regarded as human becomings rather than human beings (Qvortrup, 2009; pp.639).

Attention is then drawn to the discourse of childhood. Through discourse it enables us to understand how childhood as a concept begins to emerge in urban spaces and creates identities connected with age (Horschelman & van Blerk, 2012). Young individuals have been credited for their ability to produce their own accounts of the city (ibid.). The relational perspectives that are aligned with this show how young people use their imagination and experiences of participation to contribute to their built environment. This thought has been translated into the life phase concept, in which children and their childhoods are defined in relation to the interactions they share with others throughout different phases of life (ibid.).

Childhood and play in the urban fabric has been studied for many years. Colin Ward (1979), British anarchist writer wrote profoundly on the city incorporating children and play:

“I don’t want a Childhood City. I want a city where children live in the same world as I do... If the claim of children to share the city is admitted, the whole environment has to be designed and shaped with their needs in mind...” (ibid; pp.179).

Ward (ibid.) therefore emphasises that cities need to be spaces of accessibility for children. They use the environment whether invited or not, as their imaginations allow them to develop visions of affordances in the city. This acknowledgement was further proved by Lady Marjory Allen (1968), and her discovery of the adventure playground. She kept the idea of the play space simple, aiming to answer merely what play did we enjoy in our childhood and how can we provide this opportunity in an urban built environment? The adventure playground was a way of adapting and mitigating the impact of urbanisation on cities and the adverse effects on play space in general by appreciating the infinite affordances found in the natural environment. Ward supported the existence of the adventure playground, calling them “a free society in miniature” (1961; pp.194) providing harmony and potential for children to still grow in an apprehensive environment. This begins to touch on the concept around the right to the city, and more specifically the right to play.

In the 1920s, Former Prime Minister of the UK David Lloyd George stated his claims that to disrupt a child’s right to play is to cause harm and infringe upon rights, with further detriment on all citizens (ibid.). The naturality of play as a primary way of developing makes the right towards it one of the first experiences for a child to claim the city and space (Ozanne & Ozanne, 2011). The Declaration on the Rights of the Child affirmed children’s rights and concerned debates around play, concluding it a basic child right, that was signed and agreed across 192 nations by 2009 (ibid.).

This attention to rights draws me back to the inequalities of play spaces in the built environment.

What happens when we cannot play?

Privatisation of public spaces, as seen in figure 1, as well as general criminalisation of minorities, has forced ethic minority children to be restricted from the standard requirements for their childhood development (Ulen, 2016). As mentioned earlier by Colin Ward, children will play wherever and whenever, and to restrict this through regulations has enabled play to be seen as a nuisance and sometimes even criminal (Casey, 2007). This has been termed play deprivation. Theorist Fraser Brown goes as far as to say play deprivation is merely a consequence of neurotic behaviour (2018) and believes this suffering within childhood prevents an optimistic outlook on life (ibid.) Brown credits Hughes (2003) for coining the phrase adulteration, which refers simply to the negative impact adults have on children and their play habits. Both Brown (2018) and Hughes (2003) contribute risk as a concept into play nature. The experimental nature of play makes it an adventure, and the term adventure has been synonymous with challenging the environment: taking risk. This relates back to the adventure playground, as children are capable of meeting their personal play needs by engaging with the affordances of the environment. Their subconscious dependency on their imagination makes play a very simple task, however processes such as adulteration, have deepened inequalities in the built urban environment and has deprived certain groups access to their right to play, thereby unsatisfying their needs.

Playground designer Robin Moore (1980) said

"To me, [place] is a means for integrating knowledge of the world into human relationships. It is a currency of belonging — a hierarchy of intersecting social and physical geographies" (Moore, 1980; pp. 59).

This sort of statement forces places like playgrounds to embody a ‘landscape of childhood’ (Smith, 1990; pp.72). Playgrounds then personify safety (ibid.). They can avoid disruptive influences and valorise childhood as a notion. Therefore, being unable to access these spaces can be concerning.

Relating to theories of recognition, youths who find themselves underrepresented in their spaces whilst growing up can end up responding in controversial ways. 37% of all children within London were living in poverty in 2018 (CPAG, 2018). Further intersectional analysis provided evidence that this was found mostly amongst BAME children (ibid.). These inequalities have detrimental effects on the spaces in which these children grow up, lacking provision of play space and thus what develops are noxious environments that have contributed to rising levels of certain crimes. As well as play being an example of successful social integration, it also emphasises the need for recognition. They both become necessities for the process of socialisation (Heidenengren, 2004), and the political discussions around recognition have highlighted multi-culturalism (ibid.). Diverse communities have struggled to claim recognition as much as the white demographic. These inequality-based statistics revert back to the claims around being too poor to play, as the levels of poverty have directly impacted their right to play.

British rapper and activist, Akala, draws attention to the increasing racial disparities in children’s rights to play and childhood. He curated a podcast and novel, named Natives, in which he thoroughly discussed childhood racial marginalisation, and the adverse impacts of not having play space can evoke on a child (BBC Sounds, 2021). The podcast was insightful, as Akala made it aware that his segregated housing situation forced him into a delinquent crowd. He expanded graphically, revealing his lack of recognition and belongingness as a child in the built environment had meant he was witnessing serious offences such as stabbings at the age of 12 (ibid.). These sorts of exaggerations are mentally damaging to the child and help make conclusions towards the lack of child perspectives in the way they are disregarded in the built environment. This makes it comprehendible that rapper Akala had taken his platform to encourage black youth who are underrepresented in the built environment to engage in vocalising their feelings (BBC Sounds, 2021). He encouraged musical engagement as a form of expression, which is a key strategy in reclaiming the missing recognition caused by a lack of play space made available to black children.

Akala put intense emphasis on black youths finding alternative ways to express their struggle for recognition, rather than turning to crime. 41% of caught knife crime cases in London in 2019 were children from the ages of 15 – 19, and 73% of offenders were black minorities (Bentham, 2019). These societal problems become related to the geographies of power that concern youth values and culture and are now a feature of urban life that needs to be regulated (Malone, 2002 in Abbott-Chapman & Robertson, 2009; pp.421). The recency of the crimes deduced from lack of recognition in a childhood debate shows the lack of improvement of racial inequalities in childhood, which have been further heightened by the significant urban processes.

Gentrification’s impact on youth interaction with the built environment

It is well established that gentrification undermines childhood access to play space and can result in vulnerable residents that tend to be working-class and minorities. Processes of gentrification and general urbanisation are focused directly on their economic impact and not the ramifications for the changes on playing in the built environment. Children are on the trajectory to becoming the key urbanites of the city but are often regarded as problems within the city too (Van den Berg, 2012). Poorer youth are blamed for liveability issues (ibid.). Dickens & Butcher (2016) wrote how such gentrification was creating complex experiences of displacement amongst youth. The voices of the youth regarding the contestation of urban life have been absent in professional discussion.

Little is known regarding the relationship between age and spatial practices within a city (Watson, 2006), and gentrification study is dominated by adult perspectives. Young people have a proportion of focus on their leisure time (Travlou, 2003), making them knowledgeable subjects on the array of experiences and consequences gentrification has had on their built environment. However, young individuals tend to be related more to the disordered nature of the built environment (Dickens & Butcher, 2016) and are ousted from contributing to urban change observations and must adapt to spaces of adults (Travlou, 2003).

This derives from the youthful demographic being ‘regulated by unequal power relations’ (ibid.; pp. 801) that have been established in the home as well as the city. The interventions applied to the city are built around adult understandings of space. Waltzer (1986) thus developed ‘single minded spaces’, which are spaces privileging certain structures of society and preventing the possibilities to use space in a multitude of ways, which young people tend to be strongly connected with.

Similarly, they are refrained from joining the debates around urban change despite being largely subject to it. Spatial dislocation can contribute to fears and the stressful social transitions can be very disruptive. Dickens & Butcher (2016) acknowledged that these fears could come from the loss of play space, especially as young people’s wellbeing is largely bounded to the socialisation these spaces bring.

Both academics carried out a study on the youthful perspectives of gentrification in Hackney and how these young people had felt since the changing use of their built environment. They noted that the young people interviewed in the study were very aware of the decline in play spaces, and the transition they made to using voided spaces as a hub for play, but even these spaces have shrunk. Thus, spaces no longer become places as the relationships are disrupted. The distinction between space and place has been a thoroughly researched geographical phenomenon. Space is the state of an environment prior to a development of meaning, which enables individuals to obtain a sense of belonging, and therefore becomes a place (Tuan, 1977).

Dickens & Butcher (2016) interviewed a youth worker, Penny, who said:

I think because of the lack of space that young people have within that community, within Hackney ... and them changing it to flats and things like that, there ain’t enough space for young people.

These findings portray the importance of spaces existing, and further emphasising the importance of them transitioning into places. These sorts of comments also refer back to how children can be disregarded from urban discussions, and are not credited for their capability of bridging the dichotomy between private and public spaces through the way they play. This skill develops from the way in which the culture of childhood is developed initially in play spaces and how they are a space designed to be adult free and encourage thought (James et al., 1998). The importance of play space becomes apparent here as the rights for children in the built environment are dependent on such engagement (McKendrick et al., 2000).

The spatial displacement derived from gentrification tends to effect housing dramatically. The research here can relate to the inequalities on housing developments and can be connected to the poor attempts for youths in gentrified spaces to gain momentum into socialisation. Parallel to this, playgrounds can be a substitute for poor housing. Experiences of citizenship are materialised in the home and the inequalities of certain demographics embodied through housing can cause tension (Koch, 2016), thus having a space to escape to can be crucial.

Undoubtedly, the home is a space of comfort and identity, however spaces to play allow children to create memories and connections (Abbott-Chapman & Robertson, 2009). The spaces amplify experiences. Play studies have referenced the disappearance of freedom and the alterations time has had on ‘roaming radius.’ Roaming radius consists of the freedom children had to play with little interaction with adults and supervision (ibid.). James (2007) notes that the extension to roam has declined by nearly 90% since the 1970s. Multiple studies have found that freedom in terms of play is incredibly impactful, made evident when reminiscing about their childhood within their research (Abbott-Chapman & Robertson, 2009; Holloway & Valentine, 2000; Robertson, et al., 2001). The participation of children within these research examples memories of play activities held no boundaries, and they [KR6] were able to develop “a sense of belonging of the body that is of space” (ibid.; pp.420). These acknowledgements thus make the existence of play spaces in the current urban fabric a necessity. The lack of affiliation with roaming radius and deeper engagement with social anxieties means we need designated space for children to continue their socialisation processes. The playground therefore becomes a response to the severity of urban change and enables children to emerge and find their identities (Kleiber, 1999).

Conclusion

Thorough research has been conducted into the importance of play as a notion and it provides substantial evidence that it is a necessity to every life course (Brown, 2018). As play has become an extension to the body that is reliant on the built environment to be executed, access to the provision of play space is vital. The way in which the built environment develops means there has to be a constant eye on how to maintain the possibility for children to obtain their necessary socialisation, including physically, mentally, culturally, etc.

Children are able to integrate themselves into most spaces of the urban fabric and find ways to create notions of play, as Ward (1979) mentioned. However, Ward addressed this back in the 1970s, before urban changes and processes gained the momentum they have today. The anxieties around such paced changed allowed activists like Akala to address the growing fears regarding childhood, and how that along with developing socialisation, children need to be engaged with theories of recognition. To have young people interact with crime presents little hope for society and contradicts the explanations for certain gentrification processes that occur in spaces like London. It also presents, more deeply, that the intersectionalities of everyday life can interrupt the simplistic nature of play, showing how inequality closely traverses most aspects of urban life.

Engaging with literature on the perspectives of urban change and where certain children believe are their more favoured spaces, left room to make connections and assumptions around play spaces. Therefore, there is opportunity in academia to gather research in the specificities of the importance of play spaces in regards to the built environment by children rather than adults. Of course, children are harder subjects to engage with, as there are complexities around ethics and agency, but engaging adults as research participants does not come without limitations either. For example, with the identification of the aforementioned process of adulteration, adults can be biased when studying play space.

It is interesting to engage with a subject that is not obviously or always perceived as something with such impact and knowledge behind it. However, children are an important demographic to be considered in urban planning, and therefore playgrounds or play spaces should be taken seriously as critical aspects of the built environment. If children are considered as merely ‘human becomings,’ it is necessary that they have space to ‘become’.

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