Second, Rob will be speaking with Teresa (from
on "
Landscapes and Community Health
" on 2/10 at 1:30pm Rm 501.
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Rifle's New Park Celebrates History and Looks Towards the Future
With the grand opening coming up on Saturday, September 25th, we here at Design Concepts are getting excited about the completion of Rifle, Colorado's new Centennial Park. We have been working on this project for several years now, starting with a master plan and proceeding to help Rifle win a sizeable grant for the park, then on through construction documents and completion of the first phase of the park.
The park is designed to celebrate the city's first 100 years of settlement. But it also points the way into the next 100 years through things like the use of LED lighting and off-the-grid solar technology to illuminate the park's walkways. For more details on this, see the CLEER organization's September 15th edition of its newsletter, which explains how the energy-saving lights were made possible through technical and financial assistance at the state and local levels.
Grants, partnerships, sustainable design, and cutting-edge technology are all crucial parts of building parks today. They also keep our job interesting and challenging. Next time you are passing through Rifle, pull off the highway and spend some time there. This progressive community has many interesting things to see, including a beautiful new park!
The park is designed to celebrate the city's first 100 years of settlement. But it also points the way into the next 100 years through things like the use of LED lighting and off-the-grid solar technology to illuminate the park's walkways. For more details on this, see the CLEER organization's September 15th edition of its newsletter, which explains how the energy-saving lights were made possible through technical and financial assistance at the state and local levels.
Swingsets and Apple Pie - Two Great American Icons
Following up on something I ran across today, I searched the internet for stories about the removal of swings from school playgrounds in a county in West Virginia. Sure enough, there is plenty of buzz about it. One good source of information was today's West Virgina Record, an online legal journal.
Turns out the county schools safety manager has decided the cost of maintaining the required safety surfacing under all of the swingsets in the school system is too expensive, as is the cost of the lawsuits filed against Cabell County Schools (two in the past year) for injuries sustained on swingsets. So he's having swings removed from all of the county's elementary schools.
As someone who has designed plenty of playgrounds, I can understand his problem. Swings require a very large area of safety surfacing compared to other elements on a playground, which takes time and money to install and maintain properly.
This situation brings up a lot of questions. Like, what is the value of play, relative to other things the school has to pay for? Are swings more valuable than other play elements, enough so to justify the extra expense of providing them? And is depriving kids of the opportunity to swing on the school playground just plain "un-American"? Some people seem to think so.
I have my own thoughts on these questions, but the fact is, it's hard to point to reliable sources for definitive answers. Yet these are turning out to be important questions. Important enough that a state senator has gotten involved. Senator Evan Jenkins, D-Cabell has asked the Cabell County Schools Superintendent to suspend the removal of swings from playgrounds until the matter can be looked at more fully. Jenkins is asking interesting questions, like what the history of injuries from swingsets really is in Cabell and statewide; and how much removing swingsets from school playgrounds will save the county on its insurance premiums.
If nothing else, this story points out that child's play is a lot more complicated than people think, and a lot more important, too, in today's complicated world. That makes what we do here at Design Concepts just a little more worthwhile, I think.
Rob Layton
Turns out the county schools safety manager has decided the cost of maintaining the required safety surfacing under all of the swingsets in the school system is too expensive, as is the cost of the lawsuits filed against Cabell County Schools (two in the past year) for injuries sustained on swingsets. So he's having swings removed from all of the county's elementary schools.
As someone who has designed plenty of playgrounds, I can understand his problem. Swings require a very large area of safety surfacing compared to other elements on a playground, which takes time and money to install and maintain properly.
This situation brings up a lot of questions. Like, what is the value of play, relative to other things the school has to pay for? Are swings more valuable than other play elements, enough so to justify the extra expense of providing them? And is depriving kids of the opportunity to swing on the school playground just plain "un-American"? Some people seem to think so.
I have my own thoughts on these questions, but the fact is, it's hard to point to reliable sources for definitive answers. Yet these are turning out to be important questions. Important enough that a state senator has gotten involved. Senator Evan Jenkins, D-Cabell has asked the Cabell County Schools Superintendent to suspend the removal of swings from playgrounds until the matter can be looked at more fully. Jenkins is asking interesting questions, like what the history of injuries from swingsets really is in Cabell and statewide; and how much removing swingsets from school playgrounds will save the county on its insurance premiums.
If nothing else, this story points out that child's play is a lot more complicated than people think, and a lot more important, too, in today's complicated world. That makes what we do here at Design Concepts just a little more worthwhile, I think.
Rob Layton
Golf Cars - The Follow-Up
For those interested in the follow-up to my last blog on the Town of Erie's consideration to allow golf carts on some city streets, you can get the full story here.
Basically, the decision was made to allow golf carts as a mode of transportation, with certain restrictions. To me, this represents a big step in changing the way people think about how they get around and will ultimately make Erie's neighborhoods quieter, safer, and friendlier. It may also lead to some changes in the way streets and neighborhoods are designed. More compact and better connected developments may be one outcome of this decision.
And while golf carts may not be as pollution-free as walking or riding your bike, it is likely that they are an improvement over the 200-horsepower automobiles that people are currently using for local trips around Erie. Happy motoring, Erie!
Rob Layton
Basically, the decision was made to allow golf carts as a mode of transportation, with certain restrictions. To me, this represents a big step in changing the way people think about how they get around and will ultimately make Erie's neighborhoods quieter, safer, and friendlier. It may also lead to some changes in the way streets and neighborhoods are designed. More compact and better connected developments may be one outcome of this decision.
And while golf carts may not be as pollution-free as walking or riding your bike, it is likely that they are an improvement over the 200-horsepower automobiles that people are currently using for local trips around Erie. Happy motoring, Erie!
Rob Layton
