Commitment 2

Designing an annual action plan for play . Some of the work in creating a Playful City USA is hands-on — participating in a build, recruiting volunteers to care for a playspace over time, drafting a city ordinance on play, organizing neighborhood watches and meeting with parks and recreation officials to address problems before they start. Other work includes advocating for a city ordinance, new policies and legislation by working with mayors, city councilors and other policymakers. In creating an action plan, you develop a road map for negotiating these activities. In addition, an action plan provides focus and points of accountability, as well as offering a tool for measuring success.

For example:

• The Philadelphia Parks Alliance convened forums of park users, grassroots neighborhood leaders, former public officials, environmental experts, advocates for recreation and others to develop a blueprint for reforming the city's parks and playspaces. They are now pushing for city council legislation to improve the process for appointing park commissioners and make them more accountable. Similar efforts in other cities could be useful in designing a plan for city legislation on play and playspaces.

• Salt Lake City, Seattle, Austin and other American cities have signed the United Nations 21 Urban Environmental Accords, which addresses playspaces. By signing the accords, a city pledges to meet certain goals concerning energy use, waste reduction, environmental health and other areas. With respect to play, the Urban Environmental Accords require that cities have a public park or accessible open space within a half-a-kilometer (about a quarter of a mile) for every resident by 2015. Some activists may ask their city to adopt the accords to achieve their goals for play; others may wish to draft their own legislative goals and use the accords as a guide.

• People for Parks, an all-volunteer nonprofit organization in Raleigh, North Carolina, provided a strong voice for unstructured play and recreation in the city's parks planning process. They organized an intensive grassroots effort to ensure that community concerns were considered: keeping interested people and groups informed through email; visiting civic associations; keeping the issue in the press; lobbying key decision-makers; and conducting focus groups with mothers of small children. In 2005, when the city council adopted the comprehensive parks plan, it was much more responsive to the need for parks and playspaces within walking distances of children's homes.

• Legislative action is sometimes needed to create more playspaces. In March 2006, New York City Council Member Gale Brewer introduced a resolution calling on the city's Department of Education to open schoolyards after school hours. Seventy-three percent of schoolyards (948 acres of public land) are closed to the public on nights and weekends. This initiative could go a long way in creating more safe playspaces, especially in low-income communities.

• Citizen action has a powerful impact on the laws and policies that govern children's playspaces as well. In 2005, environmental and children's rights groups worked to ban smoking in playgrounds and parks. Parents were concerned about second-hand smoke and children putting discarded cigarette butts in their mouths.