PLYGRND.city

  • Posted on: 25 September 2017
  • By: Koen Linthorst

Short summary

PLYGRND.city is an organization which creates 'games' in the public spaces for people to have fun, meet new people, have fun with friends, bring them into motion, and for them to experience their city differently. Also known as Urban Playgrounds, these 'games' can be found at parks, squares, stations and many other various public spaces. Games are designed to match specific themes or 'DNA' of specific cities. Allowing games to be applicable, and hopefully successful, to specific cities.

The drive from PLYGRND.city is that:

We love to see you smile a bit more play a bit more discover a bit more...

An initiative using public spaces to try to get people more interactive and connected with their cities. Stated by PLYGRND.city as:

What we do? We make the city your playground. With people, for people. And we leave the playing blocks behind.

Context

The PLYGRND.city initiatives come from the idea of being a part of a transitioning world. A world which will be passed onto future generations, where societal well-being and personal development are the highest values and finding the truth in the laws of nature. A world in which you design your own destiny, and the vitality of our people and cities are certain. Therefore PLYGRND.city asks itself a few questions to help guide their ideas, such as:

  • How can we make our cities and society more vital and bring people a little closer to each other?
  • How can we encourage health and well-being on our planet?
  • How can we really connect?
  • Or 'how can I spread just a pinch of love or positivism today, to someone else, to myself'.

Social and urban activities are the objectives of the playgrounds. Enlightening various topics of a city.

Transformational Measures and Activities

Transformational measures don’t really take place. Activities/ 'games' however are what they focus on. Those games being made up of, urban workouts (street workouts), happy routes and escape rooms taking place in various 'playgrounds' around cities. Anyone can create a game, and then share it with other 'players'.

  • Urban workouts (blue/orange wayfinders)
    • Working out on the street
    • Bootcamp, calisthenics, running or an easy walk
    • Challenge friends to play - battle against each other
    • Approximately 20 minute 'play' time
  • Happy Routes (blue/gold wayfinders)
    • A walking route (more fun than the Sunday walk)
    • Mindfulness, poetry and other nice content for your brain, soul and spirit
    • Possibility for cooperative walk, take an elderly or disabled for a walk
    • Approximately 45-60 minutes of 'play' time
  • Escape Rooms (blue/pink wayfinders)
    • Work together with others to get out of the situation, Escape!
    • Fun, but not easy, challenging game
    • Approximately 30-60 minutes

Results

One of the results is that there are fun and alternative activities, or games, to do in the city. These games/ activities provide for more fun usages of public spaces/ crystallization points and gives people the opportunities to do something (diiferent) in the public spaces.

Challenges, Opportunities and Transferability

Transferability of such games should be quite implementable across other cities. Challenges however may arise in such transfers. For example it is important for a city to have sufficient public space around for fun games to take place. As well as this it could help if there is a population or targeted group (maybe tourists, or children) that consumes such games. But this could also be seen as an opportunity instead of a challenge, as it can be an opportunity for a city and its population to be involved in the urban games/ urban environment, making their city more fun in a different kind of way.

In Depth

http://www.plygrnd.city/