Transformation of children's playgrounds in urban space: A pattern analysis for commercial playgrounds in shopping centers

The playgrounds which are spontaneously constructed mainly via the choices and preferences of the children in the urban space have been replaced by specially designed commercial playgrounds due to the intense and uncontrolled urbanization. These commercial playgrounds can be accessed for a fee, especially within shopping malls. This observed trend points out that the changing role of playground in which children experiment to establish and develop social relations via play and also transformation of children into customer and in turn a commercial commodity. For this reason, commercialized and customized playgrounds play an important role in this process. This thesis emphasizes that playgrounds have evolved from open urban spaces such as streets and close quarters to closed and paid spaces in shopping malls. In addition, this situation cannot be considered independent of the effect of the relationship that childhood establishes with the act of consumption as a constructed social reality. Within the scope of the thesis, the play spaces offered in 524 commercial children's playgrounds located in shopping malls in Turkey are examined. The research results for the activity dynamics of studied playgrounds (target audience, parental control, activity nature and action quality) reveal that that most of commercial playgrounds target preschool children, the majority of them have a high parental control policy, passive and directed play action nature, and offer predominantly individual games. The research results for the adopted fee policy of the studied playgrounds (cost to the user, commercial location value) fee payment based on timed (minutes) space usage are used and only 4% of the studied playgrounds can be used. The fee policy adopted in these playgrounds are applied by design layout - separated space. It is concluded that due to the physical boundaries and the equipment of plays offered in the studied playgrounds are controversial in terms of their suitability for fulfilling the main important functions of play such as testing their skill and abilities, developing children's personalities, socializing, establishing and experimenting friendship in relations, helping and cooperating. Children can play mostly designed/edited/constructed games in the studied playgrounds. Thus, not only playgrounds are transformed, but the nature of play itself turns into a more directed and controlled activity.