In 2013, my wife and I rented an apartment in Výtoň, a classic urban neighborhood south of the tourist-packed city center of Prague. This wasn’t my first move to the capital of the Czech Republic. As a historian, I had been coming to Prague for short spells each summer for 10 years running. But, eager to explore, I always chose a different neighborhood to live in. My only fixed points were friends’ homes, a few locally admired pubs, and the archives that justified these trips to one of the world’s most beautiful cities.

Our Výtoň apartment was just a block from the banks of the Vltava River, where a farmer’s market appeared each Saturday morning. Locals promenaded along the quay in the evenings. The best gelato in town was steps away, as was a reliable grocery store and hip café. Up the hill was Vyšehrad, the city’s original fortifications-turned-massive park, which boasted panoramic views of the city.  The neighborhood was a new adventure for me, as was this particular trip to Prague: it was my wife’s and my first time seeing the city from a parent’s-eye view. Before having a family, I had enjoyed the refreshing lonesomeness of being a foreigner. But now, we were seeking to help our kids feel at home as they navigated a different language and culture. Before long, it was Výtoň’s neighborhood playground that transformed the city into a home for all of us.

Kids at Výtoň’s playground. Photo by Milada Anna Vachudova.

Filling half a city block, Výtoň’s playground had soft rubber flooring, a variety of color schemes, and a respectable sand pit. There was a large, spinnable ring whose purpose eluded nearly everyone. Run on it, like a treadmill, and then, inevitably, crash to the ground? Sit and let centrifugal forces fling you off? Knobby, oddly twisted climbing equipment complimented modernist-inspired see-saws and swings. Across the street, the occasional passenger train eased itself along an elevated railroad track. The sight never failed to excite my boys, then 5 and 3, who shouted giddily in Czech: Vlak! Vlak! (Train! Train!)

Playgrounds first emerged in the late 19th century, as part of a progressive effort to provide children in poorer neighborhoods with a dignified place to play. Other proponents argued that playgrounds kept kids out of trouble, providing a safe space from the evils and temptations of the big city. The precursors to the modern playground consisted solely of large sand pits where younger children sat and played with toys. By the turn of the century, swings and parallel bars, as well as space to sew or play games like baseball, were added in order to attract older kids to what became known as a “playground.”

Since then, safety concerns have partially driven further innovations in playground design, such as the move from concrete and steel to plastic and rubber. Gone are teeter ladders and high-in-the-air trapeze structures; instead, new, colorful structures that can be climbed, spun, and rocked mingle with old favorites, like sandpits and swings.  These designs have been influenced by an emerging scholarly and political consensus that playgrounds, just like play, are crucial to childhood development. They foster language development and social skills. They move bodies and help with coordination. They allow children to enjoy the feeling of being temporarily free of overbearing rules and supervision.

Playgrounds are for parents, too. Whoever designed the Výtoň playground clearly had adults in mind, as the benches are numerous and comfortable. Taking a seat and keeping watch on my boys out of the corner of my eye, I treasured rare moments of peace as the Czech language of childhood—with its peculiar diminutives and sing-songy tones—filled the playground.  Over time, I began to recognize other regulars who frequented the park. But we rarely spoke, unless we were forced to share the same bench—or if someone felt obliged to point out that my kid really should be wearing a winter hat in February. I was grateful for this ability to co-exist in silence, which gave my mind time to wander. Playgrounds, I learned, encourage imagination—and not just among children.

Often, as I sat on one of the playground’s plastic park benches, my daydreams fixated on the former customs house located just a few steps away. The name “Výtoň,” I soon learned, most likely emerged from the verb “to take a cut” (vytínat), referring to the duty levied upon goods traveling by boat to the city. Before the 20th century, Výtoň was one of Prague’s poorest neighborhoods. Many of its inhabitants earned a meager living pulling from the river timber that floated toward Prague from the south Bohemian forests. In the winter, many of these same inhabitants chopped ice from the river for the city’s pubs. They had children, too, yet we know almost nothing about these parents’ lives, or where their kids played.

Though I don’t know the exact date in which the Výtoň playground was built, looking at historical maps of the neighborhood, a green space first appears on the site of today’s playground in 1950. This tracks with the transformations that took place in Prague before Communists seized power: During the first half of the 20th century, grand, middle-class apartment buildings; state government offices; and houses that remain some of the city’s premier examples of cubist architecture replaced the neighborhood’s rickety structures and local prison.

Výtoň and other playgrounds that emerged as part of these urban renewal efforts speak to the progressive impulse to provide all children with a place to play. They are reminders that well-planned public spaces can create a sense of community and respite. Their absence, and decay, point to the ways that urban geographies magnify privilege and inequalities.

For my family and me, the most important effect of these plans and designs was the way that they created a sense of belonging. The playground became a place in which I could imagine myself playing a minor role in my story of its—our— neighborhood, a story told through brief neighborly encounters and soothing moments of solitude accompanied by the soundtrack of the city. It was there, daydreaming on a plastic green park bench and watching my kids play with their peers, that my foreignness faded and Prague started to become a home. In a way that no other place could, Výtoň’s playground welcomed us into the life of the city.

The post Where I Go<span class="colon">:</span> The Playground That Helped Make Prague Feel Like Home appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

The trend has its advantages. Fifteen years after the state legislated compliance with national safety standards for new and renovated public playgrounds, I can take the Three Stooges—my three impish and ever-brawling sons under age 8—to parks around California confident that I’ll see the same reassuringly safe equipment: low swings, low slides, plastic bridges rather than wood or metal, ubiquitous guardrails, and either super-soft rubbery mats or at least 12 inches of sand or wood chips to cushion falls.

But all that safe sameness is boring. Today, the fun and distinctive playground pieces that once held the attention of children—merry-go-rounds, teeter-totters, Tarzan-style ropes, high monkey bars, and flat swings—are nearly impossible to find. And playground safety, while producing declines in litigation over injuries at our local parks (data on actual injuries are less clear), carries its own risks.

Pediatric researchers have been warning that today’s playgrounds no longer provide the precarious, fast-moving kinds of play that help children overcome fears and develop sensory and motor skills. Older kids, finding playgrounds less challenging, may be using playgrounds less.

There is a way for California parents to counter these trends: Seek out those few classic California playgrounds too old (anything before the mid-’90s) to comply fully with today’s regulations. And so, like the dad who plays his kids Miles Davis records to counter bubble-gum pop and dumb rap, I’ve made it a minor mission to introduce the Three Stooges to dangerous old playgrounds.

On road trips, we’ve visited Alameda Park in Santa Barbara to experience the Kids World playground, a giant old wood fort with so many places to hide that you won’t be able to keep your eyes on one kid, much less three. Despite the real dangers of falls, we’ve enjoyed the simple playground at Tidelands Park right on Morro Bay—with its wood-and-metal pirate ship and seal statues allowing kids a glimpse of the otters in the bay and a majestic view of Morro Rock.

Then there’s our local dangerous San Gabriel Valley favorite, La Laguna, at Vincent Lugo Park in the city of San Gabriel. There’s a book to be written about the Mexican artist Benjamin Dominguez, who created 14 wonderful and somewhat scary concrete structures a half-century ago, near the end of a difficult life that also produced the Atlantis playground in Garden Grove. The concrete structures look like dinosaurs and whales and octopi, and kids climb slippery steps to go down long, treacherous slides.

*Photo courtesy of Jessica Wilson.

 
The Three Stooges love La Laguna so much I realized I needed to take them to the mecca of old-school California playgrounds: the Dennis the Menace Playground inside El Estero Park in downtown Monterey. So last week, on the way up to visit my grandmother in San Mateo, we drove the 101 (even though that guaranteed us 90 minutes more of backseat car fights than the faster 5) to make our pilgrimage.

Dennis the Menace has had some safety updates, but it remains very much the same place designed in the 1950s by Monterey citizens, including Hank Ketchum, creator of the troublemaking comic strip character for whom the park is named. There’s a suspension bridge that hangs dangerously high and long over the center of the place. Getting up to the bridge requires climbs up rocks on either side. The park is full of extra long and twisty slides. And near the back a second sundial bridge spans over a roller slide two stories tall.

Our only disappointment was that you can no longer play on the old rail steam engine near the entrance—a sign says the city is trying to figure out a way to allow access while still complying with state safety laws.

After an hour on the playground and a brief ride on the paddleboats in the park’s lagoon, I drove the family north to Grandma’s, muttering about playground greatness being a thing of California’s past. But a few days later, I was proven wrong—when I took the Stooges to Palo Alto’s Mitchell Park, where the Magical Bridge playground opened just last year.

Magical Bridge is annoying in the way of so many Silicon Valley enterprises; it’s not content to just be smart, it has to tell you how smart it is. So playground signs cite research on how its equipment is improving your children’s vestibular development, and offer links to a website boasting that Magical Bridge is “the nation’s most innovative and inclusive playground.” There’s also a donor wall honoring the tech worthies who covered the $3.8 million cost, a “Kindness Corner” with anti-bullying messages, and “a patent-pending safe slide landing.”

But, in spite of all its preciousness, the place is great.

Magical Bridge is the brainchild of a local mother who wanted a playground that would go beyond the wheelchair access mandates of the American Disabilities Act to serve children with all manner of development and physical disabilities, including her own daughter. The place’s genius is that it achieves a truly magical combination: It’s at once more inclusive and more challenging than the standard California playground.

Large disc and bucket swings can accommodate kids with disabilities and create speedy movement to satisfy risk takers. There are multiple treehouse bridges, a two-story playhouse, and a theater—all fully accessible. “Retreat” areas in different places around the playground are designed for children with autism who get over-stimulated. Some playground equipment allows children to make music with movement, including a 24-string laser harp.

The slides are tall, and there are two 21st-century versions of the merry-go-round. One is built into the ground for access and has adjustable pieces to allow kids to hold on and spin in different ways. The other combines a spinning circular platform at the bottom with a cone of ropes that allowed kids to climb even as they spin.

At the top of the merry-go-rope structure, the Stooges enjoyed a 360-degree view of this new and classic California playground. They also loved the dangerous and novel feeling of being so high that they were out of the reach of their parents.

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