Construction workers build a new apartment building in Calgary, on April 19.Louis Oliver /The Globe and Mail
Patches of paradise
Re “Urban backyards are disappearing. Can we be happy without them?” (Aug. 24): Erin Anderssen’s article raises points almost invisible in Canadian policy and planning discussion. Probably the most important are the absence of a rational Canadian population policy and the deteriorating relationship between urban residence and mental health.
Residence in cities makes people sick. Doubters should study the Oxford volume Urban Mental Health. Chapters in that book present now extensive psychiatric evidence that spending one’s youth in an urban environment dramatically increases a person’s risk of mental illness, especially schizophrenia. Urban residence also shrinks certain grey matter regions of the brain and causes others to hypertrophy. Moreover, the bigger the city, and the longer the period of residence early in life, the worse the harms to mental health.
As for the efforts of urban and regional planners to improve access to nature and otherwise make urban residence happier, unfortunately planners are more tasked with how to densify cities than with explaining where endless growth of cities will lead.
Raymond Chipeniuk PhD, regional planning and resource development Smithers, B.C.
I live in the core of Ottawa and am fortunate to have a small yard that I use for the full length of the outdoor season. Not everyone has access to a yard but what every citizen deserves is access to green space – a place to play, swimming in the wading pool, have picnics or enjoy languid summer evenings.
However, as our cities become more congested with high-rises, we are not seeing the planning of additional parks. Also all our parks now are being used as dog parks. I do not find it appealing to have children playing in the grass, or adults picnicking in this same space. Being outdoors contributes to good mental and physical health. Let’s plan our cities accordingly.
Karin Zabel Ottawa
You have published some interesting and thoughtful articles on the unhoused living in city parks. Saturday’s paper weighed the community benefits of local parks over private backyards. I look forward to reading the article on how to best enjoy a local park, complete with a tent encampment and the discarded needles, garbage and mental and addiction issues that come with it.
Mike Winward Burlington, Ont.
Putting play in playgrounds
Re “Why are our playgrounds so boring?” (Opinion, Aug. 24): Amberly McAteer properly points out the benefits of natural play and the consequences of nature deficit disorder. The issue is less about parents being unable to sip on a glass of chardonnay while their children play, like their Danish counterparts, than children in Canada being forced to play in sterile playgrounds.
City planners have attempted to engineer risk out of plastic playgrounds out of a fear of being sued. The hover culture of helicopter parents has contributed to the overall societal slide of thinking that we can bubble-wrap children so they can’t conceivably get hurt. It’s the wrong approach. Scrapes and spills may be the cost to pay for the joy and thrill of playing outside.
Jon Heshka Associate professor, adventure studies department, Thompson Rivers University Kamloops
Until Canadian children’s play-structure engineers catch up with their ever-so-clever Scandinavian counterparts, let parents consider the simple joy of playing underdoggie on the common playground swing.
To play, the pusher propels the child to the swing’s maximum safe degree of forward and upward amplitude, then, in a crouching position, runs under the child while loudly calling out, “Underdoggieee!”
It’s a great game and not at all boring. In the most woebegone one-swing playground, listen for squeals of, “Again! Again! Again!”
Farley Helfant Toronto
Many years ago, with my first toddler child at home, I attended an evening workshop sponsored by a toy-lending library. I was hoping to be able to stimulate my little son with better educational toys and asked what was recommended as suitable. The answer, which I was not expecting: “Sand and water.”
Recalling this experience, I was heartened to read Amberly McAteer’s pitch for natural playgrounds with “giant logs, boulders, real grass.” Our new neighbourhood playground has barely more than a rudimentary log climber, a large saucer swing that holds multiple bodies and is constantly in use, a sandbox, a small wetland, and lots of grass, including a small hill for kite-flying and “extreme croquet.” When the city dropped off spare logs at our school playground, the climbing and joy were instantaneous.
I share Ms. McAteer’s doubts about plastic structures, if only for their lack of biodegradability and ugliness, and I hope for a renaissance of new naturalized playgrounds, perhaps less theme-oriented and more open to the imagination, with lots of logs, grass, sand and water.
Carol Lewis London, Ont.
When I was a youngster my parents would load my siblings into the car to drive to a scenic park at Bayview Junction in Hamilton. There was a grove of medium-sized trees with branches that beckoned for climbing.
It was fun to play hide-and-seek and tag among the trees and shrubs. The park sloped, which had to be swooped down. It was fine for sledding in the winter, too. Many years later, in an urban planning course, I was fascinated to learn about a recreation planning study that had actually surveyed children about their preferences for playground landscape and amenities. I would recommend this approach to playground planning today.
Derek Wilson Port Moody, B.C.
The article on playgrounds is unfair to Vancouver. Earlier this year, I spent a happy hour watching the children at a playground on Smithe Street that, yes, has a coffee shop at it. I was so impressed that I wrote a letter of praise to Mayor Ken Sim. It had a wonderful overhead walk, washrooms, a water feature and all sorts of extras.
Oddly, almost 60 years ago, when I was a young mother and reporter in a small Ontario city I wrote a feature on boring playgrounds.
Anne Moon Victoria
Turfing plastic grass
Re “Artificial turf is taking root on schoolyards” (Aug. 19): I am wondering what happens to the artificial turf grass (plastic) when it has outlived its usefulness. More plastic for the dump or the ocean? Contrary to what people believe, 91 per cent of plastic is not recycled.
If we are truly concerned about the welfare of young people, it would be time to face the enormity of the plastic problem they are inheriting. It is time to push back at the plastic (oil) industry and demand it start cleaning up the mess it has and is creating.
The environment should always be the number one priority. This is where our children and grandchildren will live. We are now all eating, drinking and breathing microplastic. How good is that for our biology?
Monique Fischer Toronto
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