The Playground Project: Mapping

The first step in understanding this problem in its real context was establishing an accurate map of the data in realtime. The School District of Philadelphia does not currently track the state of its playground spaces. Upon talking with experts in the field of education and play, I realized the only way to accurately assess the state of all Philadelphia elementary school playgrounds was to survey them myself. Over the course of four months, I completed site observations for 149 Philadelphia public schools. During that time, I conducted interviews with local community members, recorded photographs of each site, and populated a data sheet with my observations.