An investigation of the youth park playground in terms of adequacy and design principles: The case of Aydın city

Playgrounds and all urban green areas which provide opportunities for play carry an important role by contributing to the development of children. A playground is an outdoor area; which contains various play elements, designed according to the purposes of plays, where children build social relationships during play, maintain their physiological-emotional development and where children meet the nature. Playgrounds are places which have to be large and equipped enough, built according to the playground design principles and well administered. Playgrounds vary in respect to their target age group, physical structures, visual qualities and adequacy. The purpose of this study is to investigate the adequacy of a selected playground by means of a social research questionnaire (public-expert), to find out whether the playgrounds are suitable in terms of design principles, to determine the correctness of plant choices and to try and fix existing problems, to define places which will provide opportunities for children to play in nature and grow up as healthier individuals and to shed light on the issue of how playgrounds could be with the example of Youth Park (Aydın City). The method of the study has been set up at four stages; at the first stage a literature review was made on definitions of child and the concept of play and the design principles of playgrounds, at the second stage, an inventory of the study area was made to find out the existing state of the area components, at the third stage is composed of the evaluation of the questionnaires applied to experts (3 phase expert questionnaire) and the public aimed at finding out the qualities and adequacy of the playgrounds. And the last stage consists of a literature review, field work to determine the qualities of the playground and its surrounding area and lastly the evaluation of the data obtained from the questionnaires. As a result of the study, when the natural and cultural values of the playgrounds is evaluated in terms of their fit with the design principles, it is evident that, their qualifications are not at the desired levels.