As I was starting to write this piece, my attention was drawn to a new “play pavilion” at the Serpentine Gallery in Hyde Park, London. With an image of a colourful dome adorned with Lego, and a slide protruding from the sides, the architect, Peter Cook, explains that he is seeking to “explore the creative power of play” and “champion the spirit of play and community”, and describes the pavilion as “a piece of theatre”.1One might also note that Hyde Park, and adjoining Kensington Gardens, are already home to the £1.7 million Diana Princess of Wales Memorial Playground (currently undergoing a £3 million renewal): https://www.royalparks.org.uk/visit/parks/kensington-gardens/diana-memorial-playground/playground-renewal. With security guards, controlled access and its art gallery-adjacent installation, this is very much public art, rather than a truly playable space.
By contrast, in the neighbouring London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham, parents have been campaigning to convince the council to invest in “miserable looking,” dilapidated playgrounds with broken equipment and evidence of antisocial behaviour.2Ben Lynch, “West London parents call for more money to be spent upgrading ‘miserable looking’ play areas,” My London, May 14, 2024 https://www.mylondon.news/news/west-london-news/hammersmith-fulham-playgrounds-parents-children-29166313. Emphasising the value of neighbourhood play space, one mother argued, “It’s crucial to have spaces like this where you can walk outside of your house and engage with your community and feel safe and feel like your kids have a quality space to play in.” These parents acknowledge that cuts to local government budgets have undoubtedly had a big impact, but they also express real concerns that play has “fallen down the agenda” for Hammersmith and Fulham, as priorities lie elsewhere.
These contrasting visions of urban playability are underlined by the timing of the opening of the Serpentine Gallery’s play pavilion on World Play Day, June 11, 2025. On the same day, just a few kilometres away at the House of Lords, the “Raising the Nation” Play Commission launched its final report,3Centre for Young Lives, Everything to Play For: A Plan to Ensure Every Child in England Can Play (2025). https://www.centreforyounglives.org.uk/news-centre/everything-to-play-for. “amid warning that play is being squeezed out of children’s lives”, documenting “why children are playing less” and placing blame on “the growing barriers to play in England, including playground closures, concerns about traffic and safety, cuts to park budgets and play facilities, and the growth of a ‘No Balls Game’ anti-play culture.”4https://www.centreforyounglives.org.uk/news-centre/inquiry-report-calls-on-the-government-to-restore-school-playtime-amid-warning-that-play-is-being-squeezed-out-of-childrens-lives.
This short piece seeks to contrast the Play Pavilion’s version of the playable city with another story, which tells of the loss of play in urban space over recent decades and especially in recent years. I focus on the experiences of the UK, but this story of loss is replicated too across other parts of the world, in Europe, North America and beyond. I start by exploring general trends and reflecting on the value of public space for play and then zoom in on the case study of Jarrow, in the north-east of England, where I’ve spent 18 months researching, in collaboration with community artist Paula Turner, a class of older primary schoolchildren,5Aged 9–11 through the period of research. and the wider local community, to document and analyse their experiences of neighbourhood play.6All responsibility for the claims and arguments made in this paper remain with me, but this project would not have been possible without the profound and ongoing contributions of Paula Turner, the children themselves, and the classroom teachers and senior leadership team at the school involved.
Children’s play and the city
This second vision of playable space in England – viscerally represented by the Hammersmith and Fulham case outlined above – reflects an idea of playability that extends beyond the playful, often quirky or colourful installations and interventions in urban space that are designed and designated as playable.7Hugh Davies, Larissa Hjorth, and Sybille Lammes, “Introduction to the Special Issue: Cities as Playgrounds/Playgrounds as Cities: Rethinking Urban Play, Civic Engagement, and Socio-Spatiality,” Space and Culture 27, no.2 (2024): 132–36, https://doi.org/10.1177/12063312231159228. In the second view, the idea of playability focuses on the spaces of children’s everyday lives, their appeal, accessibility, and safety, and the extent to which they afford play. Though some of these may be spaces, such as playgrounds, skate parks and ball courts, designed for play, many aren’t, and are instead interstitial and incidental spaces that offer, invite, or make play possible.8Harry Heft, “Affordances of Children’s Environments: A Functional Approach to Environmental Description,” Children’s Environments Quarterly 5, no. 3 (Fall 1988): 29–37. https://www.jstor.org/stable/41514683; Marketta Kyttä, “Children’s Independent Mobility in Urban, Small Town, and Rural Environments.” in R. Camstra (ed.) Growing up in a Changing Urban Landscape (Van Gorcum, 1997), 41–52. http://lib.tkk.fi/Diss/2003/isbn9512268736/article4.pdf. Indeed, this second version of urban playability is nicely represented by Colin Ward’s claim,9Colin Ward, The Child in the City (Architectural Press, 1978), 87. that “One should be able to play everywhere, easily, loosely, and not forced into a “playground” or “park.” The failure of an urban environment can be measured in direct proportion to the number of ‘playgrounds’.”
Streets and other urban spaces have always been the primary places in which children play; the city has been their playground for generations, more or less playable, reflecting complex social, economic, political, environmental and cultural geographies and priorities. The rise of playgrounds in the mid-late nineteenth century in the UK, Europe, North America and beyond marked a turn away from wider geographies of playability towards the designation of enclosures for play,10Jon Winder, Designed for Play: Children’s playgrounds and the politics of urban space, 1840–2010 (University of London Press, 2024). but movements to legislate for “play streets” reflected the continuing importance of playability and urban space.11Sally Watson, “‘The Freedom of the Place During Daylight Hours’: Urban Renewal and the Fight Over Play Streets in Newcastle upon Tyne, c. 1955-1980,” Planning Perspectives (2025): 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1080/02665433.2025.2485367. The place of children’s play in the city has always been contested, with the pendulum swinging through the decades towards more or less space – and permission – to play.12Alison Stenning, “Children’s Play in grey spaces: ludic geographies and the chromatic turn.” Leisure Studies (2025): 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1080/02614367.2025.2466497.
In recent decades, however, there has been a marked decline in urban playability, from the perspective of children and young people, measured by a decline in children’s “roaming distances,” an increase in the age at which children are allowed to play out without adults, and a decline in children’s time spent outdoors.13Helen Dodd, Lily FitzGibbon, Brooke Watson, and Rachel Nesbit, “Children’s Play and Independent Mobility in 2020: Results from the British Children’s Play Survey,” International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 18, no. 8 (2025). The decline in children’s ability to play widely and freely in the city reflects the ways in which urban space has become more hostile to children’s play, alongside wider familial, socio-economic and technological shifts.
First and foremost, recent decades have seen the motor vehicle increasingly dominate urban space; from 1950 to 2015, the number of private cars registered in Great Britain rose from around 2.5 million to over 30 million14Simon Gunn, The History of Transport Systems in the UK, Government Office for Science, 2018. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5c07d08240f0b670656346e3/Historyoftransport.pdf. and the number of miles driven annually increased from approximately 50 billion to around 650 billion over the same period.15Joey D’Urso and Rachel Schraer, “10 charts that tell the story of Britain’s roads,” BBC News. December 22, 2017, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-42182497. Whilst the number of road fatalities in the UK – child and adult – has fallen significantly, this reflects not only shifting road safety cultures and planning, but also the removal of children and their play from urban space; children are less likely to be at risk as they are less likely to be playing on urban streets. Motor vehicles – moving and parked – increasingly occupy large parts of urban space, roads themselves have been extended and expanded, reducing available space for other urban activities, and the needs of drivers are often prioritised over the needs of others, especially children.
Wider social and cultural trends, across the UK and beyond, through the latter half of the twentieth century worked to undermine the playability of urban space for children and young people. These included moral panics around “stranger danger” and the intensification of parenting.16Kim Brooks, Small Animals: Parenthood in the Age of Fear (Flatiron Books, 2018). In the overlap between the cultural and the infrastructural, this period, especially in the UK, witnessed the widespread posting of “No Ball Games” signs in residential and neighbourhood spaces that would otherwise be playable. The installation of such signs “led to a strong sense of exclusion”17Virginia Morrow, ““No Ball Games”: Children’s Views of their Urban Environments,” Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health 57, no. 4 (2003): 234, https://doi.org/10.1136/jech.57.4.234. amongst children and young people, “killing all play dead,”18Penny Wilson, “Beyond the Gaudy Fence,” International Journal of Play 1, no. 1 (2012),
30, https://doi.org/10.1080/21594937.2012.659860. and it is for this reason that campaigns to remove these signs are growing in strength.19Harriet Grant, “Yes, ball games: drive to take down signs warning against play begins in London,” The Guardian, 18 March, 2025, https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/mar/18/yes-ball-games-drive-to-take-down-signs-warning-against-play-begins-in-london.
These issues resonate to the present, where the playability of urban space continues to be undermined by adults’ hostility to children’s play. News media regularly report adults complaining about children’s play, raising concerns about noise, potential damage to property, and perceived antisocial behaviour. Accounts gathered from across the UK in 2023 documented parents and children reported to local councils and to the police for playing out on their doorsteps.20Harriet Grant, “UK families tell of threats and police warnings over children playing in street,” The Guardian, April 15, 2023, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/apr/15/uk-families-threats-police-warnings-children-playing-in-street. Beyond doorsteps, children and young people are also challenged and stigmatised whilst playing in parks, playgrounds, and ball courts.
The current landscape of urban playability has also been shaped, again in the UK and beyond, by years of austerity. In the UK, as national and local government budgets have been repeatedly cut, and spending often reduced to statutory responsibilities, the spaces for children’s play have routinely lost out.21John McKendrick, Peter Kraftl, Sarah Mills, Stefanie Gregorius, and Grace Sykes, “Geographies for Play in Austere Times,” International Journal of Play 4, no. 3 (2015): 291–298. https://doi.org/10.1080/21594937.2015.1106051. The deep and widespread cuts to play services, play parks, and adventure playgrounds have been widely documented. The Association of Play Industries reported in 2018 that over 400 local authority playgrounds had been closed since 2010, with at least one third of all local authorities making cuts to their play provision. Cuts and withdrawal of provision will have continued since then, such that in many UK local authorities spending on play spaces is almost non-existent, leaving playgrounds in states close to ruin.22Harriet Grant, “England’s playgrounds crumble as council budgets fall,” The Guardian, August 4, 2023, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/aug/04/england-playgrounds-crumble-council-budgets-fall. Even in instances where facilities haven’t been closed, cuts in other spheres have impacted on the accessibility of spaces for play. For example, cuts to police and wider community safety activities can mean that play spaces no longer feel secure, especially for younger children. And the decline of local authority maintenance services and refuse collections23Annette Hastings, Nick Bailey, Glen Bramley, and Maria Gannon, “Austerity Urbanism in England: The ‘Regressive Redistribution’ of Local Government Services and the Impact on the Poor and Marginalised,” Environment and Planning A 49, no. 9 (2017): 2007-2024. can mean that play parks and other neighbourhood spaces are increasingly dirty and potentially dangerous. This is, of course, an issue of social and spatial justice: “children’s access to play space is not equal; it’s the deprived areas that are hit the hardest by cuts in public play provision and the ones that will suffer the most.”24Matt Broomfield, “Hundreds of English playgrounds have been closed due to Tory budget cuts,” The Independent, April 13, 2017, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/playgrounds-closed-england-conservative-budget-cuts-tory-government-children-public-spaces-councils-api-a7682141.html.
A snapshot of unplayability
Such an area is Jarrow, a town of approximately 30,000 people, part of the Tyneside conurbation and located about 8km east of Newcastle upon Tyne, on the south banks of the River Tyne. Jarrow expanded particularly with the growth of heavy industry, especially shipbuilding, from around 1850 to 1930. The Great Depression hit the town and its industries hard, and while some investment and industrial success was achieved as World War Two approached, the post-war period was marked by continuing decline and the town’s last shipyard closed in the 1980s. Today, over 80 percent of Jarrow’s smallest census tracts are in the top 20 percent most deprived in England. It can be best described as a town that continues to struggle, despite its location in a major urban region, severely impacted most recently by austerity, as South Tyneside Council “lost 44 per cent of its spending power” between 2010 and 2019, more than twice the English average.25“Austerity worse than Margaret Thatcher’s cuts says South Tyneside Council boss,” The Shields Gazette, December 22, 2017. https://www.shieldsgazette.com/news/austerity-worse-than-margaret-thatchers-cuts-says-south-tyneside-council-boss-165273. Because there is no dedicated play service in the borough and responsibility for provision of space to play, like in many English local authorities, falls across numerous departments (including children and young people, parks and green space, education, neighbourhood services, sports & leisure, and public health), it is difficult to assess the scale of cuts in play provision in South Tyneside, but it is safe to assume that it has been hit hard. Play provision is not a statutory service for English local authorities, meaning they have no legal duty to deliver play.
Jarrow’s geography consists of mixed urban space with dense nineteenth-century terraces and post-war estates. There are significant green spaces in the town interspersed through the town’s residential developments, from landscaped parks with playgrounds, to verges and small green pockets on housing estates, and playing fields. There also remain a number of post-industrial spaces, a pedestrianised post-war shopping precinct, and urban – grey – space (roads, pavements, car parks, playgrounds, ball courts, etc.)26Alison Stenning, “Children’s Play in Grey Spaces: Ludic Geographies and the Chromatic Turn,” Leisure Studies (2025): 1–15. throughout the town. An overgrown BMX track and a riverside skatepark testify to earlier phases of investment in public play.
At times, children and young people can be seen to be playing in these spaces, before and after school and at weekends, with family or with friends, but spatial and socio-economic challenges shape the town’s playability, and it is this that has been the focus of our ongoing research. This work sought to map these challenges, exploring how socio-economic changes, urban redevelopments, and wider cultural shifts have remade the geographies of children’s neighbourhood play in Jarrow. Working with these children, through a series of in-class activities, time in the school playground, walks through the neighbourhood, and a visit to an adventure playground in a neighbouring borough, we worked together to map and explore the children’s play geographies, focusing particularly on their experiences of play on their doorsteps and in public space.
The children talked expansively at every opportunity about their play, what it meant to them and when and where they played. Amongst many other themes, we talked in detail about what limited their play. For some it was parental concerns, often about the threat of antisocial behaviour or dangerous strangers; for others, it reflected busy, structured lives which meant little time for hanging out and playing freely in their neighbourhood; and for many, the challenges of everyday life in tough socio-economic circumstances simply made finding time for play difficult.
Yet the children also reflected on the ways that their neighbourhood environment limited their opportunities for play. They experienced first-hand the impacts of disinvestment on the playability of their doorstep spaces; derelict buildings, fly tipping, the remnants of fires, poorly-maintained paths and pavements, and piles of rubbish and rats (following an eight-month long refuse workers strike)27“Bin strikes over after eight months,” BBC News, July 19, 2024, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cd1regjnenyo. made playing out both risky and simply unpleasant.
The two most local playgrounds were of very poor quality. One was also aimed primarily at much younger children, and had suffered considerable damage and dereliction. The playground the children call “the three-swing park” had long lost its three swings, and much of its play equipment was damaged or absent in the time we have been working in Jarrow. The ball court (or MUGA, multi-use games areas) was popular, especially with the boys playing football, but has also seen better days, marked as it was by graffiti, worn surfaces and spreading weeds.
The skate park on the Tyne riverside is popular, not just for skateboarding and biking, but also just for hanging out, but for more than 37 weeks through 2024 and 2025, the signalised crossing from the children’s homes and school to the skate park, across a busy road with significant heavy traffic, was out of order. The best local park – with challenging and well-kept (though regularly fire-damaged) play equipment – demands a 25-minute walk along a hostile and busy road, with tricky crossings.
The obstacles posed by motor vehicles recurred in our activities and conversations in Jarrow. Though the estates that neighbour the school have relatively low levels of car ownership, reflecting household poverty, there are still through-streets on the estates and parked cars take up a considerable amount of space throughout, limiting children’s access to street space and to other playable spaces between housing. Other limits on the children’s mobility, and access to playable space, were identified, including safety concerns about subways and alleyways, anxieties about antisocial behaviour from older young people, and a generally hostile environment for children.
This hostility is also reflected in the children being told off for playing and hanging out. Sometimes this was neighbours concerned about noise or about balls hitting their property, but it was often perceived by the children as a general disdain on the part of adults for children’s play. To reinforce this, “No Ball Games” signs litter the estate, including on the green space right outside the children’s school entrance. Most recently, it is rumoured that a local youth club has been discouraged by the council from taking its members outside to play on a nearby and largely unused green space, and children’s attempts to build dens in their neighbourhoods have been destroyed by council officers.
Playing, affordances, and everyday playability
Nevertheless, these children play, and their neighbourhoods continue to afford play. The children narrated accounts of playing football outside a friend’s home, of walking and cycling playfully to school, of meeting at the playgrounds or the ball court, and of drawing play equipment out of their homes to pavements and neighbourhood spaces. As we walked with them through their neighbourhood, we watched them respond to play cues and possibilities, as they jumped, skipped, explored, swung and messed around, with leaves, in puddles, on walls. Informal rope swings hang throughout the estates, replaced as soon as they’re cut down, and the children are full of stories of joys – and injuries – experienced on the swings.
The Jarrow children we’ve worked with valued, and made space for, their play, despite the limits on playability in their everyday lives, but they have the right to more.28Alison Stenning, “Playing,” in (eds.) The Routledge Handbook of Cultural Geographies, ed. Peter Merriman, Anna Secor and Shanti Sumartojo (Routledge, 2026). As urban authorities, and other urban actors, invest in ideas of playability and playfulness, the everyday spaces of children’s play, and the playability of ordinary urban environments are often ignored, devalued and undermined. Any vision of the city as playable must also include a vision of – and commitment to – children’s everyday playability. In contrast to the visible, attention-grabbing projects of public playability, the provision of everyday space for neighbourhood play often rests on small, but important, acts of care, maintenance, permission and encouragement.29These kinds of agendas are promoted by work around “play sufficiency,” which seeks to “ensure that all children, young people and families have access to enough time, space, opportunity and permission to play and recreation throughout all aspects of their daily lives. It would protect, provide and enhance opportunities for play and recreation at home, at school, and throughout the public realm … through an on-going process of research, action, repair, maintenance and enhancement”. Play England Manifesto 2024: https://www.playengland.org.uk/manifesto. Streets are cleaned, motor traffic restrained, equipment repaired, and hostility challenged, for example, such that barriers to play are reduced and invitations increased, reflecting a political commitment to make cities playable and to protect and pursue children’s right to play in urban space.
Notes
| ↑1 | One might also note that Hyde Park, and adjoining Kensington Gardens, are already home to the £1.7 million Diana Princess of Wales Memorial Playground (currently undergoing a £3 million renewal): https://www.royalparks.org.uk/visit/parks/kensington-gardens/diana-memorial-playground/playground-renewal. |
|---|---|
| ↑2 | Ben Lynch, “West London parents call for more money to be spent upgrading ‘miserable looking’ play areas,” My London, May 14, 2024 https://www.mylondon.news/news/west-london-news/hammersmith-fulham-playgrounds-parents-children-29166313. |
| ↑3 | Centre for Young Lives, Everything to Play For: A Plan to Ensure Every Child in England Can Play (2025). https://www.centreforyounglives.org.uk/news-centre/everything-to-play-for. |
| ↑4 | https://www.centreforyounglives.org.uk/news-centre/inquiry-report-calls-on-the-government-to-restore-school-playtime-amid-warning-that-play-is-being-squeezed-out-of-childrens-lives. |
| ↑5 | Aged 9–11 through the period of research. |
| ↑6 | All responsibility for the claims and arguments made in this paper remain with me, but this project would not have been possible without the profound and ongoing contributions of Paula Turner, the children themselves, and the classroom teachers and senior leadership team at the school involved. |
| ↑7 | Hugh Davies, Larissa Hjorth, and Sybille Lammes, “Introduction to the Special Issue: Cities as Playgrounds/Playgrounds as Cities: Rethinking Urban Play, Civic Engagement, and Socio-Spatiality,” Space and Culture 27, no.2 (2024): 132–36, https://doi.org/10.1177/12063312231159228. |
| ↑8 | Harry Heft, “Affordances of Children’s Environments: A Functional Approach to Environmental Description,” Children’s Environments Quarterly 5, no. 3 (Fall 1988): 29–37. https://www.jstor.org/stable/41514683; Marketta Kyttä, “Children’s Independent Mobility in Urban, Small Town, and Rural Environments.” in R. Camstra (ed.) Growing up in a Changing Urban Landscape (Van Gorcum, 1997), 41–52. http://lib.tkk.fi/Diss/2003/isbn9512268736/article4.pdf. |
| ↑9 | Colin Ward, The Child in the City (Architectural Press, 1978), 87. |
| ↑10 | Jon Winder, Designed for Play: Children’s playgrounds and the politics of urban space, 1840–2010 (University of London Press, 2024). |
| ↑11 | Sally Watson, “‘The Freedom of the Place During Daylight Hours’: Urban Renewal and the Fight Over Play Streets in Newcastle upon Tyne, c. 1955-1980,” Planning Perspectives (2025): 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1080/02665433.2025.2485367. |
| ↑12 | Alison Stenning, “Children’s Play in grey spaces: ludic geographies and the chromatic turn.” Leisure Studies (2025): 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1080/02614367.2025.2466497. |
| ↑13 | Helen Dodd, Lily FitzGibbon, Brooke Watson, and Rachel Nesbit, “Children’s Play and Independent Mobility in 2020: Results from the British Children’s Play Survey,” International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 18, no. 8 (2025). |
| ↑14 | Simon Gunn, The History of Transport Systems in the UK, Government Office for Science, 2018. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5c07d08240f0b670656346e3/Historyoftransport.pdf. |
| ↑15 | Joey D’Urso and Rachel Schraer, “10 charts that tell the story of Britain’s roads,” BBC News. December 22, 2017, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-42182497. |
| ↑16 | Kim Brooks, Small Animals: Parenthood in the Age of Fear (Flatiron Books, 2018). |
| ↑17 | Virginia Morrow, ““No Ball Games”: Children’s Views of their Urban Environments,” Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health 57, no. 4 (2003): 234, https://doi.org/10.1136/jech.57.4.234. |
| ↑18 | Penny Wilson, “Beyond the Gaudy Fence,” International Journal of Play 1, no. 1 (2012), 30, https://doi.org/10.1080/21594937.2012.659860. |
| ↑19 | Harriet Grant, “Yes, ball games: drive to take down signs warning against play begins in London,” The Guardian, 18 March, 2025, https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/mar/18/yes-ball-games-drive-to-take-down-signs-warning-against-play-begins-in-london. |
| ↑20 | Harriet Grant, “UK families tell of threats and police warnings over children playing in street,” The Guardian, April 15, 2023, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/apr/15/uk-families-threats-police-warnings-children-playing-in-street. |
| ↑21 | John McKendrick, Peter Kraftl, Sarah Mills, Stefanie Gregorius, and Grace Sykes, “Geographies for Play in Austere Times,” International Journal of Play 4, no. 3 (2015): 291–298. https://doi.org/10.1080/21594937.2015.1106051. |
| ↑22 | Harriet Grant, “England’s playgrounds crumble as council budgets fall,” The Guardian, August 4, 2023, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/aug/04/england-playgrounds-crumble-council-budgets-fall. |
| ↑23 | Annette Hastings, Nick Bailey, Glen Bramley, and Maria Gannon, “Austerity Urbanism in England: The ‘Regressive Redistribution’ of Local Government Services and the Impact on the Poor and Marginalised,” Environment and Planning A 49, no. 9 (2017): 2007-2024. |
| ↑24 | Matt Broomfield, “Hundreds of English playgrounds have been closed due to Tory budget cuts,” The Independent, April 13, 2017, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/playgrounds-closed-england-conservative-budget-cuts-tory-government-children-public-spaces-councils-api-a7682141.html. |
| ↑25 | “Austerity worse than Margaret Thatcher’s cuts says South Tyneside Council boss,” The Shields Gazette, December 22, 2017. https://www.shieldsgazette.com/news/austerity-worse-than-margaret-thatchers-cuts-says-south-tyneside-council-boss-165273. |
| ↑26 | Alison Stenning, “Children’s Play in Grey Spaces: Ludic Geographies and the Chromatic Turn,” Leisure Studies (2025): 1–15. |
| ↑27 | “Bin strikes over after eight months,” BBC News, July 19, 2024, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cd1regjnenyo. |
| ↑28 | Alison Stenning, “Playing,” in (eds.) The Routledge Handbook of Cultural Geographies, ed. Peter Merriman, Anna Secor and Shanti Sumartojo (Routledge, 2026). |
| ↑29 | These kinds of agendas are promoted by work around “play sufficiency,” which seeks to “ensure that all children, young people and families have access to enough time, space, opportunity and permission to play and recreation throughout all aspects of their daily lives. It would protect, provide and enhance opportunities for play and recreation at home, at school, and throughout the public realm … through an on-going process of research, action, repair, maintenance and enhancement”. Play England Manifesto 2024: https://www.playengland.org.uk/manifesto. |
Alison Stenning is professor of social and economic geography at Newcastle University. Her primary research interests focus on everyday and emotional geographies, and are currently centred on questions of play and the city – especially on streets and in neighbourhoods – with an eye on questions of social, spatial and environmental justice. She is engaged in a series of projects exploring the geographies of neighbourhood play in the north-east of England.
