U.S. playgrounds with their slick stretches of asphalt, colorful, convoluted slides, and free-form sculptures for climbing are among the world's safest, cleanest, and most indestructible. But are they what children want? Of course not, says Lady Allen of Hurtwood, 68, a prominent British landscape architect and president of the World Organization for Early Childhood Education. After a tnonth's survey of the East Coast's showpiece playgrounds, the no-nonsense dowager observed crisply that they are "an administrator's heaven and a child's hell." Said she: "It isrntime we decide whether our playgrounds are to be designed for adults, who love to be neat, or for children, who love to be dirty."
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