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table of contents
Contents
- List of figures
- Preface
- Notes
- Introduction
- Playgrounds today
- Playing in the past
- Playground histories
- Childhood and the urban environment
- Overview
- Notes
- 1. Finding space for play: ‘playgrounds for poor children in populous places’
- Education and exercise in the mid-nineteenth century
- Childhood and urban anxieties in the late nineteenth century
- Notes
- 2. Competing playground visions: ‘a distinctly civilizing influence that gives much health and happiness’
- ‘Properly equipped playgrounds’ in the early twentieth century
- Charles Wicksteed, philanthropy and commerce
- Excitement and freedom in Wicksteed Park
- Notes
- 3. Playgrounds for the people: ‘a magnetic force to draw children away from the dangers and excitements of the streets’
- Playing fields and playgrounds in interwar Britain
- Safety and supervision
- Problems in the playground
- Designing the perfect play experience
- Notes
- 4. Orthodoxy and adventure: ‘playgrounds are often as bleak as barrack squares and just as boring’
- Orthodoxy consolidated: postwar planners and the playground
- Marjory Allen and the challenge of adventure
- Beyond the bombsite
- Reimagining the playground: artists and architects
- Notes
- 5. Playground scuffles: ‘it’s ours whatever they say’
- The power of play
- Campaigning and working for play
- Danger and decay
- Playground monsters
- Notes
- Conclusion
- References
- Primary Sources
- Secondary Sources
- Index