hours in various cafés and bars reflecting over my observations, organising my notes and planning the next day’s route.
Most of the playgrounds that I covered on my walks all over the west-ern part of the city were empty or only had a few visitors. From what it seemed, Van Beuningenplein is always populated and used, at least after ten o’clock in the mornings. It seems as though the size of a playground like Van Beuningenplein may imply a critical mass effect; i.e. people are attracted to the space because they know that there probably are others there already. After two days, I concluded that Van Beuningenplein was to become my primary study site. Not only was Van Beuningenplein play-ground by far the most frequented playplay-ground, it also offered the most varied palette of activities and uses – two major motives to choose it for more extensive observations and a deeper analysis.
Because of an unusually late spring, the temperatures were low and not as many people were out playing as I had wished for when I was plan-ning the field study trip. In addition to the low temperatures, the winds were strong, not inspiring people to be outdoors at all. In spite of these circumstances there were sufficient observations to make sense of the site-study spaces from my research perspectives. The weather the 2nd and 3rd of April was sunny but cold and windy. The temperature at 11am was about 3-5 degrees Celsius; in the afternoons it rose to about 7-8 degrees. The playground was relatively crowded on the afternoon of the 3rd of April, probably due to the fact that the schools in Amsterdam are regularly closed on Wednesday afternoons. The 4th and 5th of April were still windy and
cold, about 4-5 degrees, with skies varying between sunny and cloudy, but a bright spring light covered the city. The 6th of April was sunny and warmer than the preceding days: the temperature was about 10 degrees at noon, and the wind had almost completely died down. Consequently, the playground was more crowded than on the other days, with about twenty guardians outside and ten in the café. About 50-60 children of different ages between 0-10 years old were playing in the area close to the café pavilion; there were few teenagers, however. The café was very busy during brunch and lunch. Although an ethnic mix was evident, the Dutch language was clearly dominant. Many of the guardians were taking part in different games or monitoring the play in the different zones of the playground. Visitors without protégés were sitting on platforms and edges in the transitional space, on the periphery or in the green boundary zone.
All in all, the site-study’s design was rewarding. However, it would have been interesting to visit the Van Beuningenplein playgrounds in other seasons; in summertime, when there are more visitors and the frequent-ly-mentioned water play is in use, and in the winter, when one of the sports fields is turned into an ice-skating rink.
The initial mapping of the playgrounds that are included in this study led to a preliminaryary categorisation regarding layout, location and equipment. The playgrounds can be organised according to four spatial ty-pologies: stamp playgrounds, infill playgrounds, district playgrounds and lin-ear playgrounds. The typologies vary to such an extent that typologisation is mainly academic. However, some remarks should be made in relation to this playground typology. Analysing the types and their differences led me to deepen the study of district playgrounds, as they appeared to attract a more diverse selection of visitors and seemed to act on both a bigger, ur-ban, scale as well as on a local, neighbourhood, level. District playgrounds also appeared to offer a richer variety of social interactions, and they fur-thermore displayed a more complex selection of collectives than the other playground types. Additional and different typologisations can obviously be made using other criteria, such as for example user profiles, functional or social programming.
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Stamp playgrounds consist of just a few play artefacts, tightly assembled and typically located as a discrete part of a larger space that is character-ised by a different function or spatio-material order. The moderncharacter-ised and supplemented Aldo van Eyck playground above, called Jonas Daniël Mey-erplein (photographs 126-128), is situated in a big open space, framed by a row of buildings, a canal and a busy road. A few playground artefacts are gathered in an ensemble, seemingly incidentally located on the vast grav-el plain. Playgrounds associated with this type vary significantly in size, the selection of equipment and the way in which way they are materially demarcated. Stamp playgrounds also include spaces dedicated to specific games and sports, such as boules courts, skate parks or premises for kick bikes or BMX’s (Marnixplantsoen, photograph 129). Playgrounds situated in parks, such as the one in Frederik Henrikplantsoen below (photograph 131), can be part of this typology. Another example of this category which is not included here is the shopping mall playground – normally a limited set of play artefacts gathered in a small area connected to the mall’s com-munication system.
In-fill playgrounds (Herenmark [130, 132, 133], Bertelmanplein [134], Jacob Obrechtplein) are framed by building façades on two, three or four sides. They are clearly territorialised and demarcated as whole spaces by the
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general city fabric. The variety of play equipment is restricted and the overall size is small compared to the district playgrounds (see below). The basic play artefacts include a sandpit, swings and something to climb. The target group for these playgrounds is clearly the neighbourhood children. Local neigh-bourhood (infill-)playgrounds are usually situated close to residential areas and sometimes near schools or day-care facilities. In urban areas built in the 19th and early 20th century, the playgrounds are usually located in leftover, residual spaces and on demolition sites, while in later planning traditions they can be planned together with the buildings as an integrated spatial sort (cf. Lefaivre 2007).
District playgrounds (Van Beuningenplein, Columbusplein) are the size of the city blocks in the immediate context and normally framed by building façades on all four sides. The nature of the streets enclosing the playgrounds may vary; some are pedestrian and others are open to cars and other moto-rised vehicles. The size allows for a wider selection of play equipment and open spaces that are intended for sports and free activities. The district play-ground appears to attract visitors from the neighbourhood, but also from other parts of the city.
Linear playgrounds (Potgieterstraat, Palmgracht [136], Nieuwe Batavier Straat [135]) are characterised by play equipment arranged in a linear order along a façade or as a pedestrianized space in the middle of a street, like a
“rambla”. In my study, the examples were local and small-scale but probably attracted visitors from a wider context; I noted several children playing spon-taneously while they passed by with their families, on their way somewhere else. The fact that the playground artefacts are distributed in a very public situation, and the space is thus a mix of multiple other activities and prac-tices, allows for numerous overlapping territorial productions and hence a potentially high territorial complexity.
The serial order prompts children (and adults) to play in a given direc-tion – not haphazardly among a conglomerate of play equipment, as in a more traditional playground setting. The open linear layout and the fact that the visitors move along the artefacts as they go may lower the emotional threshold for engaging with an artefact and play. Entering a clearly defined
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playground space, as an alternative, may have implications for some people, since one then has to make a conscious decision to enter a demarcated space.
The linear playground can thus be described as a highly public domain.
Besides the above-mentioned typologies there are others not included in this study, such as: playgrounds connected to schools and pre-schools, which are normally fenced in and secluded from the general public space;
playgrounds associated to retail (outdoor and indoor); and commercial playgrounds with entrance fees (outdoor and indoor). Commercial in-door playgrounds, referred to as “play-lands”, also offer additional activi-ties such as birthday paractivi-ties. In recent decades a new kind of playground has emerged on the urban scene: the themed playground. These are also denoted ‘signature playgrounds’ and are characterised by special features such as ecology, circus, jungle, mobility, sports, etc. These playgrounds are intended to attract visitors from a wider geographical region – from distant residential areas and sometimes even from outside the city.