Exploring Parks and Playgrounds

Exploring Parks and Playgrounds
Author: Catherine Twomey Fosnot
Publisher: Firsthand Books
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2008-03
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9780325010281

"Contexts for Learning Mathematics" series is designed to support a conceptual understanding of essential mathematical ideas, strategies and models. Each unit provides a two-week sequence of investigation, minilessons, games, and other contexts for learning. The series' 18 classroom-tested units are organized into grade-appropriate levels.

Central Park’s Adventure-Style Playgrounds

Central Park’s Adventure-Style Playgrounds
Author: Marie Warsh
Publisher: LSU Press
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2019-11-20
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 0807172014

In New York’s Central Park, some of the playgrounds constructed as part of the midcentury experimental “playground revolution” still remain. In Central Park's Adventure-Style Playgrounds, Marie Warsh tells the engrossing history of these playscapes built in the 1960s and 1970s, exploring their connections to the art, recreational design, urbanism, grassroots movements, and child-development theories of the period. She further details the Central Park Conservancy’s efforts decades later to preserve and renew these playgrounds. So-called adventure-style playgrounds featured interconnected forms including pyramids, mounds, and steps, and basic materials such as water and sand, encouraging new levels of creativity and interaction. By the end of the 1970s, ten of Central Park’s twenty-two existing playgrounds—formerly paved, sterile, standard-equipment-filled lots dating to the 1930s—had been transformed according to the new design ideals. With time, deterioration prompted concerns about safety, and much of the equipment was removed. However, community interest led the Central Park Conservancy to update and preserve the playgrounds that remained in the park. Building on successful aspects of the playgrounds, designers incorporated new technologies, materials, and equipment that reflect contemporary ideas about children’s play and approaches to urban park management. They also developed strategies to better integrate them into the landscapes of the park. Today, Central Park’s adventure-style playgrounds represent significant works of renewed modern landscape architecture as well as models for new thinking about playground design.

Strong Towns

Strong Towns
Author: Charles L. Marohn, Jr.
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 262
Release: 2019-10-01
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1119564816

A new way forward for sustainable quality of life in cities of all sizes Strong Towns: A Bottom-Up Revolution to Build American Prosperity is a book of forward-thinking ideas that breaks with modern wisdom to present a new vision of urban development in the United States. Presenting the foundational ideas of the Strong Towns movement he co-founded, Charles Marohn explains why cities of all sizes continue to struggle to meet their basic needs, and reveals the new paradigm that can solve this longstanding problem. Inside, you’ll learn why inducing growth and development has been the conventional response to urban financial struggles—and why it just doesn’t work. New development and high-risk investing don’t generate enough wealth to support itself, and cities continue to struggle. Read this book to find out how cities large and small can focus on bottom-up investments to minimize risk and maximize their ability to strengthen the community financially and improve citizens’ quality of life. Develop in-depth knowledge of the underlying logic behind the “traditional” search for never-ending urban growth Learn practical solutions for ameliorating financial struggles through low-risk investment and a grassroots focus Gain insights and tools that can stop the vicious cycle of budget shortfalls and unexpected downturns Become a part of the Strong Towns revolution by shifting the focus away from top-down growth toward rebuilding American prosperity Strong Towns acknowledges that there is a problem with the American approach to growth and shows community leaders a new way forward. The Strong Towns response is a revolution in how we assemble the places we live.

Discovering Seattle Parks

Discovering Seattle Parks
Author: Linnea Westerlind
Publisher: Mountaineers Books
Total Pages: 458
Release: 2017-06-01
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 1680510029

Linnea Westerlind has visited each of Seattle’s 426 city parks, an effort which she documented on her blog, YearofSeattleParks.com—making her the absolutely perfect person to guide you to just the right park for your picnic, an outing with the kids, family reunion, or simply a fun new place to explore. Discovering Seattle’s Parks is based on Westerlind’s blog, but for this new guidebook she has revisited and further researched every single park she describes, and now includes even more detailed information and descriptions. Organized by neighborhood, such as Downtown, Queen Anne, or Northeast Seattle, the guide features full-color photos throughout and simple, illustrated maps for the largest parks with more complex trail systems. Each park’s listing includes: • Icons for key features—playgrounds, viewpoints, waterfront spots, hidden parks, and dog parks • Public transportation and parking directions • Details on the park’s history • Highlights such as public art, water features, cycling paths, and more • Color photographs that capture the park’s essence Discovering Seattle’s Parks will keep families, walkers, dog-lovers, and kids of all ages busy with year-round exploration and fun!

We Heart L.A. Parks

We Heart L.A. Parks
Author: Narrated Objects
Publisher:
Total Pages:
Release: 2021-02-14
Genre:
ISBN: 9780999167038

Public parks are vital resources to all of us as places for exploration, celebration, education, recreation, and activism. We Heart L.A. Parks celebrates these important sites by featuring more than 50 public parks within the city of Los Angeles with original illustrations, personal stories, and fun activities, including two colorful fold-outs: an L.A. parks map and an L.A. Park Adventures board game. It is a coloring and activity book for all ages by contributors of all ages -- elementary-school kids to veteran artists -- who, through their art and words, fill these pages with their deep love for the city of Los Angeles, with all its beauty and complexities, and the public parks and recreation areas we all treasure. From hiking trails and waterfalls, to basketball courts and barbecue pits, to historic architecture and park vendors -- We Heart L.A. Parks highlights the diversity of our city's open spaces and how urban wildlife and humans can share these spaces and flourish. It is a truly unique and artful guide to the city that reminds us how safe and accessible public parks strengthen communities

Let's All Go to the Park Playground

Let's All Go to the Park Playground
Author: Gregory L. Porter
Publisher:
Total Pages:
Release: 2019-02-15
Genre:
ISBN: 9780368307966

This book is a wonderful rhyming children's story aboutspending the day at the biggest playground in town.The children cannot wait to get to the park andenjoy playing in the fresh air and sunshine.With so many things to do, they move fromone adventure to the next enjoying all thisplayground has to offer.What a great day for the whole family!

Playground of My Mind

Playground of My Mind
Author: Julia Jacquette
Publisher: Prestel
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2017
Genre: Artists
ISBN: 9783791356501

Through exquisite drawings and storytelling, Julia Jacquette's graphic memoir provides a distinctive account of her childhood in Manhattan in the 1960s and 1970s. Inspired by the adventure playgrounds from her youth growing up in New York City, the painter Julia Jacquette explores the brightly colored structures of the play spaces and the surrounding landscape of the city in Playground of My Mind. With compelling illustrations and personal narrative, this book features adventure playgrounds created by architects Richard Dattner, M. Paul Friedberg, the partnership Ross Ryan Jacquette in New York City, and Aldo van Eyck in Amsterdam. These structures encouraged constructive, imaginative play and gave renewed life to utopian notions of American and European modernist architecture. Playground of My Mind reflects upon the period of the 1960s and 1970s which was a tumultuous time of social change and activism in New York City and throughout the United States. While considering the conflicted emotions that envelop idealized aspects of the past, this unique book captures the nostalgia for a bygone era of New York life in vivid detail. Published in association with the Wellin Museum of Art at Hamilton College in association with the exhibition, Julia Jacquette: Unrequited and Acts of Play.

The Design of Childhood

The Design of Childhood
Author: Alexandra Lange
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 417
Release: 2018-06-12
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 1632866374

From building blocks to city blocks, an eye-opening exploration of how children's playthings and physical surroundings affect their development. Parents obsess over their children's playdates, kindergarten curriculum, and every bump and bruise, but the toys, classrooms, playgrounds, and neighborhoods little ones engage with are just as important. These objects and spaces encode decades, even centuries of changing ideas about what makes for good child-rearing--and what does not. Do you choose wooden toys, or plastic, or, increasingly, digital? What do youngsters lose when seesaws are deemed too dangerous and slides are designed primarily for safety? How can the built environment help children cultivate self-reliance? In these debates, parents, educators, and kids themselves are often caught in the middle. Now, prominent design critic Alexandra Lange reveals the surprising histories behind the human-made elements of our children's pint-size landscape. Her fascinating investigation shows how the seemingly innocuous universe of stuff affects kids' behavior, values, and health, often in subtle ways. And she reveals how years of decisions by toymakers, architects, and urban planners have helped--and hindered--American youngsters' journeys toward independence. Seen through Lange's eyes, everything from the sandbox to the street becomes vibrant with buried meaning. The Design of Childhood will change the way you view your children's world--and your own.

Parks and Recreation System Planning

Parks and Recreation System Planning
Author: David Barth
Publisher: Island Press
Total Pages: 298
Release: 2020-07-21
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1610919335

Parks and recreation systems have evolved in remarkable ways over the past two decades. No longer just playgrounds and ballfields, parks and open spaces have become recognized as essential green infrastructure with the potential to contribute to community resiliency and sustainability. To capitalize on this potential, the parks and recreation system planning process must evolve as well. In Parks and Recreation System Planning, David Barth provides a new, step-by-step approach to creating parks systems that generate greater economic, social, and environmental benefits. Barth first advocates that parks and recreation systems should no longer be regarded as isolated facilities, but as elements of an integrated public realm. Each space should be designed to generate multiple community benefits. Next, he presents a new approach for parks and recreation planning that is integrated into community-wide issues. Chapters outline each step—evaluating existing systems, implementing a carefully crafted plan, and more—necessary for creating a successful, adaptable system. Throughout the book, he describes initiatives that are creating more resilient, sustainable, and engaging parks and recreation facilities, drawing from his experience consulting in more than 100 communities across the U.S. Parks and Recreation System Planning meets the critical need to provide an up-to-date, comprehensive approach for planning parks and recreation systems across the country. This is essential reading for every parks and recreation professional, design professional, and public official who wants their community to thrive.