2. Mapping Playability

Though the planning guidelines provide an important backbone in ensuring that play is considered in new developments, the question of assessing quality and ‘playability’ of space provided becomes equally important. I was fortunate to have the opportunity to attend a community workshop session led by Dinah Bornat, a co-director of ZCD architects and Mayor's Design Advocate. Dinah has done extensive research around the relationship between neighbourhood design and children’s play and how through meaningful engagement, we can establish these intricate relationships.

I attended one of a series of workshops led by Dinah within a borough of London which is undergoing significant redesign and densification. The workshops were established to ensure that children’s needs were meaningfully considered in the design process through genuine consultation rather than assumed adult decisions. The children and youth assessed the current ‘playability’ of their neighbourhood through a ‘traffic light’ system – allocating red for the spaces where they felt unwelcome and green for the spaces where they were most likely to play and socialise. What emerged is a complete picture of how kids use their neighbourhood and what playability meant to them. By teasing out the physical and social characteristics which made a space successful, the design team are then able to embed these qualities into a new vision for the neighbourhood. Engaging with children to holistically assess the ‘playability’ of a neighbourhood can capture the complexity of play behaviours and ensure their diverse needs are designed into projects. As Dinah Bornat said “We need to consider how children will move around a neighbourhood before we place a single building”. Unless we meaningfully engage with children during design and planning stages, their needs will be reduced to a playground count.