Children's playground design and safety

Playing a game is an indispensable necessity for children of all ages. The child spontaneously learns the skills, knowledge and behaviors necessary for his/her development during playing game. Children's playgrounds can be defined as areas where children discover nature, enjoy themselves by physical activities and increase their creativity by socializing. Children need playgrounds from many aspects. They are necessary to spend their excess energy, discover their abilities, develop their self-esteem and success feelings, control their power and overall progress of their cognitive, physical and psychological development. Due to the rapid urbanization, children living in urban areas are less able to coexist with nature, and the rapid spread of settlement areas causes a decrease in the amount of areas in which children can play. Instead of playing in the outdoor environment, children are urged to play in their home, indoors, or in the typically designed playgrounds. This situation invites many health problems in children, and physical, psychological, mental and social competences of children are affected negatively in the long term. For this reason, the importance of children's playground is increasing a little more nowadays. During the design of children's playground, it should not be ignored that it may affect the physical and mental development of children. In our country, children's playgrounds are understood as green areas where standard playground modules are installed. In the design of the children's playgrounds, typical equipment is chosen. Besides these playground equipment, children play areas where the children will be able to support their physical, mental, cognitive and emotional skills, to increase their creativity, to adapt children's pedagogy, to be safe, simple and complementary, should be designed by specialists working for local governments and the design process should be attached to a standard by taking into consideration the basic criteria. It is also important to use "effective design" methods when creating playgrounds in green areas. The parameters such as the natural land formation, the land area, the variety of equipments, etc., must be optimized by taking into account the needs of the city. By effective design, functionality is striking in children's playgrounds that will be created. In addition to design criteria, supplying of safety precautions and supervision of them are another important issue to be addressed for children's playground where children spend a lot of time. Many international organizations call on local governments to create playgrounds that children can use safely. In Turkey, relevant Turkish Standards have been accepted for taking safety precautions in children's playgrounds. However, as can be seen from the researches carried out, the safety criteria in the relevant Turkish Standards cannot be provided in the children's playgrounds and the application of these criteria is not audited. Standards for children's playgrounds are just documented in the procurement process of children's playground equipment and are not inspected during the installation and maintenance periods. The solution of some of the safety problems that exist in children's playgrounds is not available at the relevant standards and this causes some problems to remain unsolved. Thus, children's playgrounds, which are really important for children and cities, need to be searched in terms of design criteria and safety issues. Besides, playgrounds can be touched in terms of urban planning while studying safety issues and design criteria because the amount of children's play areas that a city needs is one of the design criteria for playgrounds, and the design directly affects the safety in the playgrounds. In this study; it is aimed to examine the design criteria of the children's playgrounds and to identify the safety problems for them and to find solutions to these problems. Literature survey and field research were used as a method of working for this study. In the literature review, these are the main topics examined: the basic philosophy of designing children playgrounds, the effect of playgrounds on child development, playground design and standards, safety in playgrounds, playgrounds in terms of urban planning. In the field study, playgrounds surveyed from these three perspectives: safety in playgrounds, playground design and standards and playgrounds in terms of urban planning. This study consists of five main sections. The first section is about "The philosophy of designing children's playgrounds" and in this section, it is explained that how design approach should be. In the next section, "Design criteria and standards of children's playgrounds" are examined. As a result, the design criteria are listed in subheadings and also the main headings at children playground standards in our country and some developed countries are explained. In the third section, the topic of "Safety in children's play areas" is inspected. The purpose and scope of the standards related to children's playgrounds in our country and the relevant parts of them from safety perspective are explained by creating a table Also, the safety problems in the children's playgrounds obtained during both literature review and the field work, are listed in subheadings. The following section is about "Playgrounds in terms of urban planning". According to the data obtained from the Anatolian and European branches of Parks and Gardens Department of Istanbul Municipality, playground area per capita in Istanbul is calculated and this ratio is compared to similar ratios at other countries and cities by the data obtained by literature search. The last section; "Fieldwork: Evaluation of children's playgrounds in Maltepe District"; consist of the examination of 102 children's playground located in the Maltepe District and built by the local municipality. In this context; the playgrounds are evaluated in terms of the characteristics like the amount of green space, the hard floor area, the number of trees, the presence of a bench, the presence of a garbage, the presence of lighting, the number of swing, the number of slide, the number of other game equipment, the amount of sand pool, the area of ballpark, the presence of a transformer, the availability of sports equipment and usage of seperators around the playground area. At the beginning of this field study, 102 children's playgrounds are photographed as a first step. Then the areas of these playgrounds are calculated approximately through the Netcad program. The information on the photos and the area values of the playgrounds are processed on a chart. After the table is completed, the results such as the area of playground per capita, the amount of trees in children's play areas per capita are calculated and presented with supporting chart diagrams. Also, the information about the children's playgrounds made by the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality in the Maltepe District is obtained through a literature search and mentioned in this section. This data is combined with the data of the children's playgrounds made by the local municipality and the playground area per capita in the district is calculated. As a result of the study; suggestions are made regarding safety and design criteria in children's playgrounds, which are not mentioned in the standards in our country. Moreover; the problems encountered basicly in the children's playgrounds are listed in the form of items and the other problems encountered during the literature search and field study and solution suggestions for these problems are collected and shown in a table.