Research On The Assessment Of Urban Children’s Outdoor Playground Design

Children’s development means the future of the nation,the country and the world.Children’s daily life,personality development and thinking enlightenment are all closely related to games.However,due to the prevalence of indoor entertainment,video games and the enormous academic pressure,the problem of children’s lacking outdoor play appears more apparently.Children living in cities not only face the loss of play time and opportunities,the contradiction between people and land also make them lose out-play space.Because of the lack of existing standards for children’s outdoor playground,the design and construction of such spaces lack constraints and reference indicators.Therefore,a complete assessment system can further grade the space after checking whether it’s qualified or not.It can also effectively control the design and construction quality of children’s out-play-space and guide its later development.In order to form a scientific assessment system of children’s out-play-space,a large amount of literature research in the early stage is indispensable.Most of the existing assessment systems are from a certain angle,which is not comprehensive enough,or generalized.Therefore,this study first compared outdoor and domestic classification standards to classify out-play-space according to their location.Then theoretical reading,from the four aspects,namely children’s psychology,behavioral preferences,infrastructure requirements and safety,is made for the assessment system indicators.After studying the preferences of children,this study selected 45 children playgrounds in 21 city parks according to the previous classification,extracted the spatial content,summarized the classification and confirmed the necessary space for an out-playground.After the assessment indicators are determined,because of the profession difference,this study decided to use two assessment methods separately for experts and the normal.The weight of the expert scoring method is determined by experts,while other citizen’s is determined by experts,children,parents and teachers.These data are all calculated by AHP for index weighting and calculated by yaaph.Finally,the assessment system contains expert rating with points system and the normal rating with an APH-FCE questionnaire system.The expert scoring method is more suitable for new-built or in-design spaces,while the normal rating method is more suitable for already-built spaces.Finally,this assessment system is applied to Wansong Street,Jianghan District,Wuhan,where children’s outdoor playground types are abundant.15 sites in 14 communities were selected to take the assessment.The results of the two assessment methods are similar so they are valuable.This research aims to build a better out-play environment for urban children.The assessment system is adaptable for all kinds of children’s outdoor playgrounds in cities and can provide an effective reference for builders to protect children’s outdoor playgrounds and ensure the quality of those playgrounds.The rating results can also encourage designers to create more excellent outdoor play spaces for children.