Playgrounds + Fitness Parks
Moving workouts outdoors is an important trend that is here to stay. Fresh air, sunshine and social serendipity bring happiness and hope to exercise environments. From personal health and fitness goals to healthy aging, playgrounds and fitness parks play a vital role in making those dreams a reality. Strength training and aerobic conditioning are essential skills for developing a healthy body and mind, and making the city your gym is an accessible practice when cities invest in outdoor gym solutions.
Access to a safe place to play is often overlooked in urban design. Don’t let the last day of school be the last day of recess for children. Understanding how important playgrounds are for the physical and social development of children is vital and should inform park locations, designs, and the safe pathways of travel to them. Kids need someplace to go to meet friends, blow off steam, and enjoy the myriad benefits of unstructured free play as a regular part of childhood. Playground adjacencies to schools, community centers, libraries, and multi-family housing are crucial, and can serve as buffers for time and space between activities and while caregivers are at work. Designated space for children is not only an invitation to play, it communicates that children are welcome, included, and are an important part of the community.
Placemaking for playgrounds can profoundly influence the health probability of children by instilling the healthy habits and joy of physical activity early on in childhood development – experiences that in all likelihood will influence the exercise choices of adulthood. Exercising can positively affect DNA, as well as impact epigenetic trajectories for lifespan. So, when talking about placemaking for outdoor fitness, we also need to talk about designs for teenagers, grown ups, and access to active aging. The active design of recreation sites encourages play and activity for people of all ages, interests, and abilities. Programmed parks with equipment that brings the indoor gym out can provide affordable access to using exercise as a skill for aging well and preventing, reducing, and modifying disease. Listing gendered differences in use of space and sense of safety when programming a park can help designate areas in the design for more populations (such as teenage girls, who are often left out of the conversation and therefore out of the plans). Design is problem solving for people and physical activity is part of everyday life–for everyone.
Outdoor fitness parks, multisport arenas, playgrounds, and exercise equipment for seniors provide access to training without the restraints of a gym membership. They improve physical fitness, social fitness, and mental well-being, as well as celebrate the benefits of fitness throughout lifespan. Park design that incorporates grown up exercise opportunities, such as cardio stations and strength stations, oriented facing toward small children’s equipment areas can encourage adult fitness development while still keeping an eye on the children they are caregiving; making the time and logistics of family fitness values easier. Municipalities looking to improve family fitness, population fitness, aging fitness, and first responder fitness can provide location-smart parks to provide opportunities for meaningful workouts and building community resilience.