September 2011 - Parks & Recreation - 55

There is a certain magic in coming together
around an extraordinary project
to benefit children and families.

ELVES
and accessibility concerns.
Young parents with memories of monkey bars and
creaky seesaws on hot blacktop became playground
evangelists once they grasped possibilities for dream
playscapes on beds of soft mulch. By the mid-1980s, according to play researchers Priscilla Ferguson Clement
and Jacqueline Reinier, nearly half of all playgrounds
in the United States were constructed of wood-and a
high percentage of those were community-built theme
playgrounds.
The playgrounds had a sort of viral appeal. Baby
Boomer parent volunteers who had helped build one
would show it off to their own visiting guests and extended families; and those parents, inspired, would then
launch similar projects in their communities.

BY MAUREEN HA NNA N

For all of the fond memories that these thousands of
playgrounds across the country generated, they had
unusual problems as well. John McGovern, an expert
in playground safety and accessibility and president of
Recreation Accessibility Consultants, says safety concerns including lack of accessibility, splinters, falls from
platforms, and disrepair-coupled with the high level of
maintenance required by large wooden structures-led
ultimately to the replacement of many of those early community-built playgrounds.

From Sprawling to Standardized
By the late 1990s, manufactured playgrounds featuring plastic equipment had begun to eclipse those wood

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AUGUST 2011

Parks & Recreation

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