Aug. 14, 2009

City of Phoenix Recognized as Playful City USA

The quality of and access to hundreds of city parks, recreation facilities and other playspaces have earned the city of Phoenix the Playful City USA honors for 2009 from KaBoom!, a national nonprofit dedicated to encouraging cities to devote time, energy and resources to creating play opportunities for kids.  This is the third year in a row that Phoenix has earned the designation.

To earn the award, each Playful City USA community must demonstrate creative commitments to the cause of play in the areas of quantity, quality and access.

"Play and relaxing fun are essential elements to a healthy life," said Mayor Phil Gordon. "Play brings out the best of our creativity, inspiration and innovation and we're glad that Kaboom! sees that Phoenix takes play and play spaces very seriously."

Quality relates to the number of usable, open playspaces. Quality involves subjective factors that encourage repeated use and make playspaces engaging, exciting, interesting and fun. Access entails the ability to get to a playspace (roads, trails) and a lack of barriers to the playspace (cost, safety, traffic, locked gates, equity).

The city of Phoenix partnered with the Maricopa Council on Youth Sports and Physical Activity (MCYSPA) to earn the designation. MCYSPA created a comprehensive database of play areas in the city, including city parks and other play spaces such as school yards.

Residents can find comprehensive information on city parks and facilities at phoenix.gov/parks. MCYSPA’s complete playspace database is available at mcyspa.org. Information on KaBoom is available online at kaboom.org.

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