Mon, Apr 05, 2021 page3

• FEATURE: Taipei parents lead right to play movement

  • By Lee Hsin-yin / CNA, with staff writer
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  On a breezy Sunday afternoon, laughter rose from a playground complex that looks like a red and white space fort in Youth Park in Taipei’s Wanhua District (萬華). It was built 30 years ago to commemorate the moon landing, but it is now seen as an icon that marks the development of playscape in Taiwan.

  Children would not have the chance to play in this playground if it were not for a group of mothers who fought for its conservation and urged development of similar play areas for children.

  To pass on their experience, the group, called Parks and Playgrounds for Children by Children, last year published a book about the movement, which also secured a promise from Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) to direct the Ministry of Health and Welfare to coordinate related efforts for children’s right to play.

  

  Children play in a “space fort” at Youth Park in Taipei’s Wanhua District on March 23.

  Photo: CNA

  Youth Park’s composite structures — comprising rocket installations, space-themed murals, grid nets and slides designed for different age groups — narrowly escaped demolition in 2015, when the Taipei City Government tore down two terrazzo slides without prior notice and announced plans to demolish 60 more in the city due to safety concerns.

  That move prompted an unexpected outcry from 3,000 parents, who staged a protest demanding Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) stop tearing down such facilities and building small, short and generic playground equipment as a convenient solution.

  “Children have a right to play, and they deserve better than canned-food playgrounds,” said Christine Lee (李玉華), one of the protesters who were originally loosely connected through Facebook.

  With more studies about the city’s resources for children’s recreation, which were extremely scarce back then — Lee and a dozen mothers in 2018 established the group to promote the welfare of Taipei’s youngest residents.

  “Can you imagine there were only four sandpits and 30 swings for a total of 320,000 children in Taipei?” she said.

  Citing the Convention on the Rights of the Child, adopted by UN members in 1989 and written into Taiwanese law in 2014, Lee said it was a universal value “for children to have rest and leisure, as well as to engage in play and recreational activities.”

  The pursuit of that value might be particularly relevant in Taiwan, which has been struggling with an aging society and low fertility.

  Taiwan’s population began to decline last year after peaking at 23.6 million in 2019, National Development Council data showed.

  Taiwan might become a super-aged society by 2025, meaning that one in five people would be older than 65 years, the council said.

  In response, the government in the past few years launched various incentives to build an environment more friendly toward child-rearing — including giving subsidies, and establishing more public kindergartens and recreation facilities.

  Acting in line with the government’s policy, the group’s calls to retain characteristic playgrounds and introduce inclusive parks — those designed to be accessible to all children regardless of age and physical accessibility — were finally answered.

  After rounds of negotiations with the parents, the city government decided to not only keep the slides, including the one in the space fort, but also to refurbish them to make them safe.

  Yu Kuo-jen (尤國仁), an official at the Taipei Public Works Department who oversees the city’s parks, remembered the challenges when he was assigned to communicate with the parents.

  There were quarrels in the beginning, which also involved other stakeholders who were more concerned about the safety of nongeneric playgrounds, but all sides eventually reached a consensus, he said.

  The parents have since joined hands with local governments to reshape 100 playgrounds across the nation, and they have also started networking with similar organizations worldwide for information exchanges, such as UK-based Playing Out, Chapter Zero Singapore and Tokyo Play.

  The public-private sector collaboration between the parents and the city government also resulted in a virtuous circle, as new parks began to involve their primary users, children, from their early stages of development.

  One of the best examples is the Huashan Grassland Playground in the city’s Zhongzheng District (中正), which took children as the main consultants in the design process from start to finish.

  The children were first invited to submit their design ideas and demonstrate how they use playground equipment, Lee said.

  The studies were then presented to the parents for further input, and during a year of park construction, kids were allowed to participate in real work, such as laying tiles, she said.

  During the process, mothers of different backgrounds proved to city government officials that they can be experts on children’s needs and convinced them of the feasibility of playground transformation, she said.

  “It has been a lesson in civic engagement for us, too,” Lee said, adding that she hoped she and her two children could learn how to pay attention to public affairs, find solutions and keep the completed projects sustainable.

  While those playgrounds have laid the cornerstone for children to better enjoy their childhood, Lee and fellow group members agreed that it is the parents’ attitudes that matter more.

  A child will not necessarily grow up well in those parks if their caretakers are absorbed in their cellphones, they said.
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