Where did children play before the invention of the lawn mower?

> Can city parks at least be "for humans"?

You mean, at least, besides the cities themselves, the parking lots, the industrial areas, the roads and highways, the suburbs. Yeah, at least. Poor humans. Give them at least the parks.

Prior to playgrounds, children climbed trees and did all kinds of other edge-pushing play. Modern urban/suburban (and even in many cases rural) environments provide less opportunity for that.

It's not a major investment on your part. Buy a few ropes, a swing and make your own in your garden or a nearby forest.

If you live in a location which prevents you from living a healthy life, perhaps you should think about moving.

You don't need a yard as much when you have parks :-)

Or neighborhood play areas, where they can play with class mates.

Which was considered fine at the time and depending on where you live is still fine.

There's a mom and pop place like this near me. They rented an old dead big box store (I remember shopping there when it was a Circuit City) and filled it with bounce houses and arcade games.

They charge $10/kid admission. Adults are not allowed in the bounce houses, and they've got an area set up with tables and free WiFi for the parents. They'll charge you $3.79 for a soda, so overpriced for sure but not quite movie theater or ballpark pricing.

My son begged to have his birthday party there this year. The parties have to be the big revenue driver, as it was $300 for twelve kids' worth of Domino's Pizza and use of a party room for an hour.

Funny enough, a new cafe opened up a few blocks from where I live with this in mind. About half of the customer space is a play area for smallish children, and the other half is "normal" with tables and chairs... My point being that it doesn't need to be limited to toy stores or kiddie museums, even if this particular cafe boards up shop.

You have to have all these things, because the children in a city can't just run off on their own and have to be marshalled and entertained at every step. Living in the suburbs I used to just go out every day and play in the woods and hills with my friends and we entertained themselves. Hardly boring!

Perhaps I failed to emphasize, but the last bit was important to my point. Studies have shown motor skills are important for kids and can affect later academic performance, and good playgrounds help kids develop motor skills.

> Playgrounds for children are a relative new invention, especially for the unwashed masses.

Indeed... yet somehow you don't think they play any role in how kids develop now compared to before they became common?

I've yet to find a kid that doesn't find a flat field of grass outdoors to be fun, so if there's a problem here, it's parents keeping kids indoors, not playground safety being too good.

They all know what a park/playground is

The kids at my local school used to play for hours after classes but last week were told they have to leave within 10 minutes of the bell for 'liability reasons'

Combined with the volume of traffic nowadays and the conversion of local parks to pay-per-use 'sportplexes', most parents unfortunately just decide to coop their children in their gardens.

Kids don't want AstroTurf pitches and climbing walls, they just need quiet residentual streets or a brownfield site with sticks and ponds. But they're gone.

This is not true where I currently live. It's a recently new suburban area (less than 15 years old) in an Australian city with a great number of parks scattered through it. Nearly every park has a playground and they are all different and all very high quality. Indeed, I'm quite amazed at how much money has been spent installing playgrounds. There is a great variety of what is on offer - some have latticed rope climbing nets, some have climbing walls, some have flying foxes, plus many other very imaginative features. They all have soft surfaces under them to cushion falls and most have a shade cloth over them. I am frankly envious of what is on offer to children these days - it is vastly superior and more exciting than what I had as a child.

Trees and other outdoor features still exist that are 'undesigned' and can provide significant risk and thrill to the more adventurous child who climbs up and on them. But I applaud the increased safety built into the modern playground. To me it appears to have spurred innovation and imaginative design, not hampered it.

That's what life was like back when we lived in Italy a few years ago. It was pretty good in a lot of ways!

When we moved here to Oregon, we landed in a rental with a big, beautiful back yard that didn't see much use.

"Kids don't need a big yard to play, they need other kids" - and living in a denser area provides more kids.

That's not to say no one should have a yard or anything, just that it's really not all that it's cracked up to be.

In Italy, we essentially had no yard at all, and they were mostly ok - often we'd take them to the park where all the other local kids went, and they loved it, because almost always they saw someone they knew.

S'funny you say that. Years ago I went to a photography exhibition showing photos taken by a bunch of hippies.

One photograph showed kids playing on a climbing frame. The caption underneath read: "Children Playing on a Tree Made of Metal".

A rather fitting comment on industrialisation and urbanisation if ever there was one.

The solution to this problem is to revolt. Stop taking your kids to the playground. Get them helmets and a kickbike and go to the local skateboard park. Go out hiking with them, even if it's just 300 yards in a park. Run on the beach. Let them eat the sand. Give them proper rain clothing and boots so they can jump in puddles for hours on end. Teach them that there is no bad weather, just bad clothing. Show them how a socket wrench works. Let them "help" whenever you're doing something, if it's cooking or cleaning or repairing stuff or whatever. And for gods sake don't buy them a tablet.

DISCLAIMER: said activities may require physical exercise and actual parenting.

If that's the best argument in favor, I'll stick with the current playgrounds. Kids got seriously injured when I was growing up. One of them broke his leg. At least one broke an arm. Smaller injuries like getting scraped up and having bruises were very common. I don't think the cost-benefit analysis worked out in favor of dangerous playgrounds. Most of the arguments in favor apply equally well to having kids jump out of moving vehicles.