Rethinking Play Environments for Social Inclusion in Our Communities

"Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable" is one of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals of the 2030 Agenda approved by the UN General Assembly. This means that every Country must commit to facing the challenge of increasingly welcoming and barrier-free cities, providing "universal access to safe, inclusive and accessible, green and public spaces, in particular for women and children, older persons and persons with disabilities". The mission of inclusive play is to create accessible and sensory-rich play environments that meet the widest range of users and abilities offering several and stimulating play opportunities in the same setting. In many playgrounds of our cities, for persons with disabilities, accessing, moving and making play experiences is not easy, in some cases it is not possible. The paper presents the results of a study carried out in order to investigate the inclusiveness of outdoor playgrounds and introduces the need of new perspectives towards a new and innovative view of inclusive playgrounds. The development process of the checklist for assessing the inclusiveness of outdoor playgrounds involved four steps. Step 1: Definition of the main concepts of investigation and generation of the items on the basis of the relevant literature and best practices. Step 2: Scaling and scoring. Step 3: Pilot test to verify the real applicability of the checklist. Step 4: Design of the final checklist. The final checklist was applied to a sample of playgrounds belonging to an Italian urban area selected as a case study in order to make a picture of the state of the art of the playgrounds built in recent years. After the checklist application, the processing of the collected data shows that there is still much to be done to make urban play areas fully accessible and usable by all. Physical accessibility (not always guaranteed) to the play area and to the play components is not enough. Currently there are few playgrounds that ensure inclusive experiences by offering a wide range of equipment with different game values and levels of challenge and services that can be used by everyone. Inclusive playgrounds in our communities are still a small percentage compared to all existing play environments, although there is a greater attention to the theme from year to year. The importance of inclusive playgrounds is recognized by everyone at a theoretical level, but in practice it is still necessary to promote, implement and verify the culture of accessibility and inclusive play. If we want inclusive cities, it is necessary to find skills and resources as well as effective operational tools to map the critical issues of existing playgrounds and to implement restyling interventions or new projects of successful and comprehensive inclusive play environments.