July 2016 - Parks & Recreation - 14

Community Center

Where Work Meets Play: A Research-Based Approach
to the Design and Evaluation of Smale Riverfront Park
By Kate Tooke

creams of delight come from the slide hillside, mixing with the comfortable
chatter of nearby parents. I watch a little girl launch herself down the slide.
She hollers cheerfully as she careens off the end, taking a tumble before regaining her feet. She turns and flashes me a big smile, eyes shining, calling out,
" Mama, come play! " I scribble down a few last notes and run over to join her.

On this sunny Saturday in mid-October, myself, my daughter, Tessa, and a
team of designers from Sasaki Associates Inc. are in Cincinnati to conduct a
post-occupancy evaluation of the new
playscapes at Smale Riverfront Park.
The park sits on the banks of the Ohio
River between Paul Brown Stadium and
the Great American Ball Park. Cincinnati is hardly short on playgrounds - the
Trust for Public Land ranks it No. 2 in
the nation when it comes to playgrounds
per capita - but in the six months since
this playscape opened, it has become a
regional destination for families. A park

maintenance staffer said some parts
of the park had " at least one child per
square foot " on summer weekends.
In part, the park is so popular because
it is so different. Here, instead of the
plastic post-and-platform structures of a
typical American playground, climbing
walls, boulders, bridges, logs and slide
hillsides await curious kids. It's a place
that seems a bit wild and a little risky, a
place where the unexpected can happen.
The refreshing change of pace at
Smale is part of a nationwide movement
to re-invigorate outdoor playspaces. Susan Solomon, author of American Play-

grounds: Revitalizing Community Space, describes today's default playground as " the
McDonald's model: " a garishly colored
and unimaginative collection of posts,
platforms, tunnels and slides stamped
uniformly across the country. " Things
like taking risks, learning to fail, learning to master something, to plan ahead,
to develop deep friendships, " Solomon
says, " none of those could take place on
most playgrounds today. " Children are
suffering as a result. A lack of free play
opportunities is culpable in forming the
habits of a generation of children who
are less imaginative, creative and expressive, according to Kyung-Hee Kim, an
educational psychologist at the College
of William and Mary and the author of
the 2011 paper The Creativity Crisis.
During the past decade a groundswell
of play advocates - including parents,

The first two phases of Smale Riverfront Park were completed in 2011 and include complex urban landscapes and structures stepping down to the
floodplain. The third phase, which opened in 2013, includes 15 acres of parkland within the floodplain. Phases four and five opened together in the
spring of 2015 and include a carousel built on a structure above the floodplain and 15 more acres of flood-absorbing parkland.
12 Parks & Recreation

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July 2016 - Parks & Recreation

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