Designing cooler, healthier, more equitable playgrounds

Many school playgrounds are sited near heavily-trafficked roadways and often exhibit small heat islands. The artificial design of many playspaces, in addition to urbanization and climate change, are exacerbating these environmental extremes, raising concerns for children's overall health, well-being, learning, and behavior at school.

Vanos worked with Paideia Academies to use innovative and sustainable solutions to redesign two playspaces to become natural play and learning environments, which exhibit miniature landscapes full of compelling play and learning opportunities ready to be discovered by children. The designs included grass, trees, hedges, mulch, hills, tunnels, caves, walls, gardens, and a sand box. They also included a small weather station on the playspace roof to measure temperature, humidity, radiation, wind speed, nitrous dioxide and particulate matter. Vanos and her partners worked across disciplines and sectors to ensure that the designs fit the needs of the scholar and bridged important health equity gaps not currently assessed by schools, districts, and communities. The project underscored the value of open communication with children, parents, and teachers in the design process and of using local environmental knowledge (including air quality and weather patterns) for effective design.

This ongoing evidence-based research could shift the paradigm of playground design to improve health usability, reduce harmful exposures, and leverage valuable space to advance health equity and resilience.