OBSERVATION: Many of Hong Kong’s bland public playgrounds are poorly designed and maintained, and may represent significant safety issues for children.
SOLUTION: Provide safe, well-researched and better designed playgrounds with more appropriate equipment, materials, features and amenities — coupled with more rigorous and frequent inspections.
Hong Kong has a wide variety of playgrounds throughout its many districts; the majority of the 600+ public playground areas are managed by the HKSAR Leisure and Cultural and Services Department (LCSD). Playgrounds within private residential developments and public housing estates are typically within the purview of the Hong Kong Housing Authority and the Hong Kong Housing Society.
A 2017 Legislative Council report concluded that LCSD-managed public playgrounds suffered from:
- uneven distribution through the city’s districts
- insufficient provision of play equipment
- monotonous playground design
- insufficient channels for community participation in the design process
- insufficient inclusive facilities
As of 2017, Hong Kong’s public playgrounds provided a paltry average 0.27 sq m per child; a 2018 UNICEF report further lamented that Hong Kong’s open space for play spaces is only a small fraction of other major Asian cities like Tokyo, Seoul, Shanghai, and Singapore.
Today, it appears nothing has changed.
PLAY EQUIPMENT
Many of Hong Kong’s public playgrounds use commercially-available proprietary plastic playground equipment in a variety of bright colors. However, due to Hong Kong’s climate, many of the darker colored surfaces — ranging from seating to slides –heat up to “untouchable” temperatures in the summer months, rendering them unsafe and unusable.
The protective finishes on many of the factory-painted “high touch” areas of playground equipment tend to rub off due to repeated use, and sometimes results in the premature corrosion of the metal substrate below.
Due to Hong Kong’s coastal climate, the accelerated corrosion of playground members also results in issues of structural instability, and the potential for equipment to structurally fail due to the live loads of multiple children playing.
The selection of playground equipment at public play areas is often heavily criticized by users, and has raised complaints from the HKSAR Legislative Council in recent years. Sometimes, the selection of playground equipment may be purely based on the recommendation of an overseas equipment manufacturer. However, how many installations in Hong Kong have actually been based on local research into local children’s preferences or through community engagement exercises?
As an example, a large stage-like section at the playground below is largely underutilized –even during peak periods — while the very few swings that have been provided at this playground are in extremely high demand throughout the day, resulting in ad hoc queues and frequent playground squabbles involving both children and adults.
SHADING DEVICES
Some playgrounds have been equipped with shading devices above select play areas, but these are largely absent throughout many playgrounds. This results in an increased chance of dehydration and heat stroke in children playing beneath the sun for an extended period. This is further exacerbated by a total lack of drinking fountains or rehydration stations at playground areas, which many global cities have mandated by law.
GROUNDSCAPE
While many play equipment areas have been thoughtfully surrounded by rubberized safety pavers to cushion falls, the hardscape areas surrounding these areas — perhaps under the purview of different government departments — have drainage grates that result in significant safety hazards.
The grate below, with it’s wide slats, was responsible for the loss of a 6-year old’s two front teeth, when her two wheeled scooter became entrapped in one of the linear slots while traveling at speed, catapulting her over the handlebars, and landing face-first on the pavers. The author of this post was the child’s father who witnessed the entire traumatic event and rushed her to the dentist!
The same type of grate is installed in the middle of a dedicated bicycle path frequently used by children — needless to say, this is an accident waiting to happen.
Could drainage grates at playgrounds be replaced with a new design with smaller apertures as shown below?
NEXT STEPS
WHAT IF … Hong Kong’s playgrounds were to be revamped to incorporate the following best practices and improvements:
- Provide professionally designed playgrounds that are based on extensive research of the demographics of the catchment area, resident surveys, and detailed analysis — instead of relying on potentially outdated planning guidelines, rules of thumb, and manufacturer recommendations
- Construct playgrounds that are larger, have more diverse activities, and provide a greater degree of inclusiveness for children of all abilities
- Seek community participation in the design of new and existing playgrounds, and increase responsiveness to user needs
- Invent more playground concepts based upon a specific theme — instead of the monotonous “standard issue” proprietary playground equipment package used by the LCSD
- Diversify and provide attractions that better stimulate other senses such as sound and touch
- Integrate nature into playgrounds –even if it’s a pile of large boulders that children can scramble up and overlook activities below
- Maximize the use of shading devices above playground equipment geared to younger children
- Allocate dedicated areas for the use of bicycles, scooters, skateboards, roller-blades, and other wheeled play equipment — with appropriate smooth finishes, and non-hazardous drainage grates.
- Specify lighter-colored climate-appropriate play equipment to minimize heat gain during very sunny periods
- Select a wider variety of play equipment, which may include seesaws, merry-go-rounds, sandboxes, playhouses, and mazes
- Use equipment with more durable paint finishes, or antimicrobial materials with integral colors, at high touch areas
- Encourage the use of innovative play equipment where the kinetic energy of swings, merry-go-rounds, spinners, etc. could be harnessed and stored to recharge phones, power playground lighting, and perhaps drive overhead fan systems in helping to cool play areas
- Use solar-powered overhead fan systems that are automatically activated on hot days
- Enhance landscaping and select evergreen plant materials to provide shade while minimize seasonal shedding of leaves relative to maintenance
- Design landscapes to direct and “pre-cool” the prevailing breezes to help passively cool playgrounds during hot summer months
- Provide picnic tables to facilitate eating and playing — instead of standard rows of benches — tables could also patterned with chess boards and other local board-games
- Provide patterned rubberized safety pavers with “hopscotch” numbers, symbols, or other footwork games that encourage movement — instead of a sea of monochromatic pavers
- Incorporate water features and wet play areas to provide cooling during hot summer months
- Construct public toilets within an acceptable walking distance of all playgrounds, which include family toilets with diaper changing stations
- Install rehydration stations at all playgrounds that dispense clean potable water, free of charge
- Consider supplying vending machines that dispense playground-specific products that might include bottled water, sports drinks, snacks, sunscreen lotion, and mini first-aid kits containing bandages for minor scrapes; recycling bins could be co-located with these machines
- Provide an emergency / duress telephone in case of emergency — not everyone carries a mobile phone to the playground.
- Mandate more frequent inspections of existing installations by certified playground safety inspectors, and require a more proactive repair and maintenance program by relevant government departments
- Require that new playground installations or updates are implemented at least every 8 years, if not sooner
Hong Kong’s playgrounds need a major overhaul and more rigorous inspections to provide our children with safe outdoor venues in which to play and to improve the city’s quality of life. If not now — when?