Jerusalem Playground Reviews -- Agenda and Parameters

Agenda
Two main objectives motivate my effort to review Jerusalem playgrounds:

1) To provide parents and others with information about parks and playgrounds in Jerusalem -- information that might be hard to come by in the course of their day-to-day activities.

* With regard to local residents, the idea is to offer a glimpse of play areas throughout the city. People naturally tend to stick with what they know, with what is closest to home. But sometimes the answer to a need lies a bit farther afield. And sometimes a perfectly worthwhile solution is closer to home than one might think.

* With regard to tourists, I thought it might be a good idea to offer information about more "heimish" or local-color playgrounds -- places that can be used as bases for exploring different neighborhoods on foot.

2) Grandiose as it might seem, I hope to exert an influence on those involved in planning Jerusalem parks and playgrounds. Probably the main reason that I have come to explore playgrounds outside of my home neighborhood over last dozen years or so is the erosion (as I see it) of traditional standards of playground design. A failure to provide for shade (not just in immediate terms, but in the long term as well); a lack of concern for how parks/playgrounds interact with the neighborhood as a whole (isolated locations, distance from shopping, services, etc.); a disregard of visibility issues (e.g., hiding play areas behind high walls); an inappropriate separation of shrubbery and trees from playground users ... these and other issues have frustrated me over the years as I have transported my children to play areas around Jerusalem in search of shade, contact with nature, and stimulating encounters with urban life.

Review Parameters

Parameters include:

Location (street and neighborhood)
Shade -- IMHO, the single most important factor in determining a playground's usability during daytime hours, and one that the Jerusalem Municipality has consistently ignored in the design of its newer playgrounds.
Play equipment -- In general, Jerusalem playgrounds are rather poorly equipped by Western standards. There is little creativity and much repetitiveness. In my home neighborhood, playgrounds within a block or two of each other have virtually the same slide/tunnel structures, spring toys, etc. Even the playgrounds which I have reviewed most enthusiastically are not those with the fanciest equipment -- but I'm not sure that's such a terrible thing. One point that I try to underscore throughout these reviews is the importance of a playground's location, overall layout, multiple-use status, and interaction with the surrounding environment. Children don't need the most expensive toys available on the market -- they need environments that are stimulating.
Age suitability
Snack factor -- Although I, like many other mothers, try to bring healthy snacks or even meals (depending on the time of day) along on park outings, there are certain summer mainstays, such as ice creams and ices, that are often inconvenient to pack and schlep. Sometimes you forget stuff. Sometimes you just want to fly out the door and not pack anything. A small grocery or kiosk near the park can be a lifesaver. It can also bring more human traffic to the park, and make it a more sociable place.
Schmooze factor -- Both children and their adult escorts benefit from human interaction. Sometimes it can be pleasant to have a park/playground to yourself, but usually you want to see people.
Multiple uses within the park -- A playground with just one item of play equipment, or a number of items that are suited to a specific age range, will obviously be of limited use. Likewise, a space that contains some play equipment but offers no access to nature and no areas to explore, will not be too attractive to children or adults. Multiple uses give parks the ability to be different things to different users, or different things to the same user on different occasions.
Beyond the park -- Items of interest to parents and children that are within an easy walking distance from the park. Parks and playgrounds that are isolated from commercial and other land uses are less valuable than they might otherwise be -- however fancy the equipment in them.

Summertime, libraries, Brooklyn, Jerusalem

It's mid-August. The kids' summer camps have long since ended. Every day is an exercise in parental ingenuity: how to keep the children occupied in a positive way. How to keep eyes off screens, grubby little fingers off keyboards.

Outdoor excursions are important in summer, at least to our family. But reading is also an activity that -- in the mind of yours truly, a former librarian -- is strongly associated with summer vacations. August, as I remember it from childhood, is public-library prime-time.

Granted, the Brooklyn of my formative years was a public-library-goer's utopia. Perhaps I was spoiled -- though I do recall a certain famous NYC fiscal crisis of the mid-1970s ("Ford to City: Drop D--d") in which public library hours were curtailed. But that didn't leave much of an impression.

Israel has never developed the kind of public-library culture that exists in the US. The municipal library systems here vary greatly in caliber from locality to locality, and there are no professional organizations with sufficient clout to set and enforce standards. I'm not sure why the Israeli public-library sphere has evolved so little over the years. Books certainly are expensive here -- like everything else; how Israelis have managed to obtain reading material all these decades in the absence of quality public libraries, I cannot imagine. (But then I have trouble understanding how they can afford expensive new cars, trips abroad, etc., on their Israeli salaries.)

It's worth pointing out that a neighborhood branch of a municipal public library system doesn't have to be anything grandiose. Some of my fondest Brooklyn-childhood memories are of a modest storefront library that was located around the corner from our home on East 58 St. I was sorry when it later moved a few blocks away to a new, larger building at a busy commercial intersection. The storefront library had perfectly complemented the sleepy little strip of shops around the corner from us on Ave. T: the old-style luncheonette with the swivel stools; the cool, dim grocery with its fascinating stacks of canned goods -- themselves like bookshelves in a way; the perfumey drugstore with its aisles of greeting-cards; the Chinese laundry with the honest-to-goodness Chinese family living in its back room.

The little library nestled among these stores might not have served the adults of the neighborhood very well, but from a child's perspective, it was "right-sized."

Nostalgia aside, it is worth noting that, even before a proper, dedicated library building was built to serve this part of southeast Brooklyn, the municipal library system recognized the need to provide services to the local taxpaying population. In the absence of a building, the municipality rented a store and set up a library in it, with regular opening hours. Not too difficult, right?

The Jerusalem municipality was capable, in the past, of coming up with solutions of this kind, in order to serve residents in newer neighborhoods where library buildings had yet to be built. If I'm not mistaken, both central and eastern Pisgat Ze'ev had public library branches operating on the premises of local schools, within a reasonable time frame after these areas became populated. Nothing fancy, for sure. But serviceable. Normal, convenient opening hours. Someplace to take your kids for an hour or two on a hot summer afternoon. Someplace to read a magazine, get some books.

Something happened during the Lupolianski mayoral administration. Suddenly, it became okay to disenfranchise taxpaying Jerusalemites -- to penalize them for deciding to live in the city's newer neighborhoods. Suddenly, the lack of a library building became a good excuse for simply neglecting to provide library services. Send the bookmobile in there 2-3 times a week for an hour. That'll do.

Below is the site where a public library is slated for construction, in the neighborhood of Jerusalem where I live -- Har Homa:



Plans for this site also include kindergarten buildings and a small synagogue (the neighborhood is in a perpetual state of crisis regarding both kindergarten and shul space).

The photo above was taken about half a year ago. The work has not advanced appreciably since then.

In lieu of a real library, our neighborhood's children have been served for nearly a decade now by this rather forbidding specimen of a mobile library:



For years I and my family snubbed the bookmobile. I had a "Mom-mobile" at my disposal and Baka wasn't too far away; we could get there on a weekly basis in summer, and perhaps once every six weeks during the school year. Not ideal -- certainly not walkable -- but it seemed pleasanter and more civilized to patronize a real (albeit modest) library every few weeks than to climb into that unventilated and unappealing little truck -- like a furnace in summer, and (so my kids claimed) reeking of cigarette smoke.

Then, a couple of summers ago, the arrival of a new baby made the trip to the Baka library less practicable. I went through the mobile library's irritating subscription process (writing out half a dozen deposit checks for a hundred shekels each, so my 3 older kids could each take out two books at a time). Of course I hardly expected the Jerusalem mobile library's circulation system to be integrated with that of the city's public library system as a whole -- seeing that the neighborhood branches themselves are not integrated as a Westerner would expect them to be: instead of having a library card that serves you at all municipal branches, you have to take out a subscription at each and every branch that you want to patronize, going through the annoying deposit-check process every single time.

So we subscribed, my kids used the mobile library a few times that summer ... then stopped once school started up again.

The mobile library comes to Har Homa only 3 times a week, for an hour or, at best, an hour and a half at a time -- somewhere between 3:30 and 5:30 pm. What this means is that a child who goes to school outside of the neighborhood (a large proportion of Har Homa's children fall into that category) and comes home at around 4:00 pm, has little chance of making it to the mobile library, after unpacking his/her day for Ima and grabbing a bite to eat. What is more, many organized after-school activities, such as martial arts or music lessons, conflict with these miserly mobile-library hours.

As things worked out, my kids were unable to make use of the Jerusalem mobile library during its operating hours in Har Homa.

What is needed, clearly, is a local library that offers services during the normal range of hours for a Jerusalem branch -- from 2:00 pm to 7:00 pm, 4 or 5 afternoons a week. Whether that library is operated out of a storefront rented by the municipality, or in a caravan planted in one of the schoolyards -- that's for the iriya to decide.

Har Homa, for those not aware of the local demographic situation, is overwhelmingly a neighborhood of families with young children. Basically, an entire generation of children has been growing up here without library services worthy of the name. Nine years is an awfully long time for the "new neighborhood" excuse to be employed. And library service is hardly the only sphere in which that excuse is being employed.

Not that things are altogether rosy in Baka. To get to my summer 2011 library saga: I decided to try the mobile library again this year. Not out of any enthusiasm, but because I found out that the Baka library would be closing for two whole weeks during August.

Based on previous years' experience I had been expecting the library to close for one week, when the community center that houses it shuts down for "concentrated" staff vacations. One August day a few years ago I arrived in Baka with my kids expecting to pass a couple of pleasant hours in the library, only to find, along with other families that had come for the same purpose, that the library was closed for the week -- nobody had bothered to post notices beforehand. When I inquired afterward why the library had shut down for a week during the month when it was probably most needed, the librarian told me that it is unsafe to keep the library open while the community center itself is closed.

That, unfortunately, sounds like a typical Jerusalem Municipality solution -- rather than getting a security guard to stand at the entrance to the community center so the library can stay open during peak season, they just cancel services for the duration (ditto for several other Jerusalem public libraries housed within community centers).

A public library branch, even a small and poorly-equipped one, represents a considerable investment of public resources. Isn't it a horrible waste of resources for a library to shut down for even one week -- let alone two -- during the summer vacation?

In despair, I decided to try again with the mobile library. However, I had misplaced the sheet I once had detailing the bookmobile hours. I spent quite a while online trying to find the information, ultimately reaching this page which lists bookmobile hours for other neighborhoods, but makes no mention of Har Homa. The mobile library does not appear on the list of Jerusalem public libraries provided at the municipality website.

Okay, I could just have picked up the phone to the main branch at Beit Ha'Am and asked. But as it happened, the bookmobile was there one afternoon while I and a couple of my kids were walking down the street. So we climbed on in. My kids chose a few books for themselves; but when we tried to check them out, the librarian was unable to locate any record of our subscription. It's all hard-copy, you see. The index card had been lost.

I didn't have any checks on me and couldn't re-subscribe. So we left the books behind and went home. A few days later, we subscribed at the Gilo library branch (which has its own building, so it doesn't close during August). I hadn't thought of it as an option before, as I had understood the English children's book collection there to be quite minimal compared with Baka's and it's important to me that my kids read in both of their languages ... but in the end it was fine. My oldest found a Hardy Boys book that he had never read before, the staff displayed a heroic degree of understanding when my toddler threw a tantrum over a sippy cup that didn't belong to her, and we were able to combine the library visit with a trip to the Gilo pool next door. My only gripe: having to haul a stroller up a flight of stairs to get to the library, which was built in the days before anyone thought of access. A person who gets around in a wheelchair could not make use of the facility (and I gather that this is the case at other Jerusalem branches as well).

The Lifschitz Street Park -- Jerusalem Playground Reviews, pt. 2

Location: Access to this large Baka park/playground is via Lifschitz and Peretz Streets, and by a footpath to the side of the kindergarten building at #9 Pierre Koenig St. (the path includes a few steps).


It took years and years for me to discover this gem of a park -- and I thought I knew the area well, despite not actually being a Baka resident. Presumably anyone who lives in Baka would be familiar with the place; yet it is remarkably invisible to non-residents, despite its size (large by Jerusalem standards) and open, flowing design. Somehow the park manages to be wedged between two major thoroughfares -- Rivka St. (to which Lifschitz runs directly parallel -- pictured at left) and Pierre Koenig (the main drag of the Talpiot Industrial Area) -- yet without being visible from either.
Rivka and Pierre Koenig streets bustle with commercial activity, vehicular and foot traffic, yet the Lifschitz Street Park -- accessible to both via short footpaths, is a veritable oasis of greenery and calm.

Shade: In general, this park has abundant shade.

The toddler play area has sufficient shade to make it usable throughout the morning, until noon.
The play area for older children is, unfortunately, in full sun pretty much all day -- from 10:00 am or so until 3:00 or 3:30 pm.
The lawns/picnic areas have plenty of shade throughout the day.

Play equipment:

Older children: The play equipment for older children includes, in addition to the swing set pictured at top, a large slide/tunnel complex.


Toddlers: A separate play area (on the park's lower level) includes a slide, a carousel, a running barrel, spring toys and seesaws. Nothing too fancy, just plain, old-fashioned and serviceable equipment.

On the upper level (the older children's play area), the aforementioned swing set includes one toddler swing.
The upper and lower play areas are connected both by steps and by a winding path for strollers.

Seating: There are plenty of benches in shady spots throughout the park, as well as a couple of picnic tables.

Snack factor: There is no adjacent grocery or kiosk, making it hard to pick up something healthy if you've forgotten to bring provisions, or to treat the crew to an ice cream. However, the nearby Talpiot Industrial Area offers an abundance of eateries and supermarkets. Rivka Street, directly parallel to Lifschitz, is home to Burekas Ima (pictured at left). Ima, a venerable local institution , offers a particularly large selection of semi-nutritious mizrachi-style savory baked goods such as individual pizzas, pitot topped with roasted vegetables, blinz-type things filled with chickpea paste, etc. -- along with the standard burekassim, breads/rolls and dessert items. So you don't have to feel too guilty about having left those tuna sandwiches home. Treat yourself to an iced coffee, while you're at it.

Chevra (schmooze factor): One thing that I find distinctive about this park is the presence, on weekday mornings, of a regular crowd consisting primarily of metaplot (family-based childcare providers) and their young charges. This provides a certain user base that makes the park attractive to other people as well. As noted above, the park, despite its proximity to a major commercial and shopping area, is hidden from the nearby main roads and doesn't get much "incidental" traffic -- i.e., shoppers dropping by to sip a soft drink, or to let their kids air out between errands so they don't get pushed past their boredom limit; working people on their lunch hour, and so on.
This limitation on the park's user diversity is compensated for by the presence, at regular hours, of metaplot and young children, who attract other users that the park might otherwise not get.

Knowing that Orly will be in the toddler playground area at around 11:00 with her little troupe of 2-3 year olds --
and her exceedingly gentle and tolerant dog Angie --
makes me and other SAHMs/WAHMs want to be there too.

This combination of metaplot who integrate the playground into their daycare routine, and mothers who drop by on a more irregular basis with their youngsters, creates a sense of community -- a social framework that is intimate yet open, stable yet fluid.

Multiple uses within the park:

-- There is play equipment that suits both toddlers and school-aged children.

--The fact that the toddler and older-child play areas are on separate levels, rather than being inconvenient, is actually a plus.

The areas are visible to each other, so a mother in the toddler area can keep track (to some degree) of what the older kids are up to, and they are connected both by steps and by a winding path for the convenience of stroller-pushers and wheelchair-users. (This concern for access is, unfortunately, not something to be taken for granted in Jerusalem.)

-- The older-child play equipment includes some items that can be used by toddlers, e.g. a toddler swing within the swing set ,
while some of the toddler equipment could be attractive to older children as well
... meaning that a youngster who gets bored in one area of the park can wander to another area and find something to do there.

-- Lawns on both levels with ample shade throughout the day.

-- Picnic benches.

-- Shrubbery that is open and child-friendly (suitable for exploring).

-- Paths for bicycling/tricycling/scootering/"bimba-ing".
-- Sometimes features intended for other uses entirely become successful play arenas. My two year old just loves to walk around and around the stone perimeters of these raised tree/shrubbery platforms:


Beyond the park (services and amenities available in the Lifschitz St. area)

Despite being hidden and little-known, the park is close to all sorts of worthwhile things:
-- In one direction you have the shopping mecca of Talpiot, with its lovably chaotic mix of malls and commercial strips, carpentry shops, eateries, auto repair shops, educational institutions, government agency offices, and organizational headquarters. If you know where the Lifschitz Street Park is,
and your errands are confined to, say, the Hadar Mall on Pierre Koenig St. (pictured at left) and thereabouts, you can easily combine a shopping expedition with a park outing. If you come to the area by car, I recommend simply parking on Lifschitz St. (parking there is plentiful; in addition to the on-street parking there is a large lot surrounding the Yedidya shul adjacent to the park). You can get out to Rivka St. via one of two footpaths that start directly across from the park and from the adjacent Kehillat Yedidya shul.

--In the other direction, into the quiet streets of Baka, there are a few points of interest for those seeking to entertain children. One is the Baka branch of the Jerusalem Public Library, located in the community center at 3 Issachar St. Although by Western standards this library is exceedingly modest, by Jerusalem standards it is quite presentable. There is some comfortable seating, and parents can often be seen reading to young children here. The library has a relatively decent collection of English-language books for children.

Another item of interest in Baka is Zoology (pronounced in Hebrew with a hard "g") -- an animal-based enrichment and activity center for children. It is located on the premises of the Tali Geulim School on Kibbutz Galuyot St., a couple of blocks from the Lifschitz Street Park. Zoology runs courses and also has open hours for visitors, with explanations by trained guides.

Items of visual/architectural interest on Lifschitz St.:

Lifschitz Street features an eclectic mix of old stone houses ...

newer imitation Arab-style houses ...
and shikkun buildings (1950s-era Israeli mass housing) that have been refurbished in a respectable, if uninspired, way. Note the shrubbery in front of these buildings, and the human-scaled entrance area -- features that recent Jerusalem residential architecture has done away with in favor of the almighty garage entrance.

Directly across the street from the park entrance, at #25 Lifschitz, one enters a footpath

that turns into what must be one of Jerusalem's narrowest walkways:


This little passageway yields some picturesque sights:



The rather bucolic little footpath brings you out to busy Rivka Street. Note the Domino's Pizza located in an old stone house stranded in the middle of a parking lot.


Back on Lifschitz, at #12 (right next to the park entrance), is the synagogue building of Kehillat Yedidya, completed in 2003. According to Kehillat Yedidya's website, the structure resembles an "unfurling scroll."


Up the street is is a more traditionally-designed shul building:


Photo credit:
Hadar Mall via Wikimedia Commons

The Hildesheimer Park -- Jerusalem Playground Review, pt. 1

Location: Intersection of Hildesheimer and HaTzefira streets, the German Colony (one block down from Emek Refaim St.)

Shade: This park is blessed with mature trees that make it at least partly usable throughout the day. Some of the play equipment, including one section of the large slide/tunnel complex, remains cool to the touch until around noon (at least), though the swings and seesaw become unusable considerably earlier.

Play equipment: The park was renovated about three years ago; a large sandbox (usually full of cat droppings) was removed and a decrepit old slide replaced with a state-of-the-art slide/tunnel complex. Swings -- a major attraction and relative rarity in Jerusalem playgrounds -- were added (though not the kind suitable for toddlers), along with a spring toy, a small carousel, and a seesaw.

Exercise equipment for adults was installed as well -- wonder how much use it actually gets.
In point of fact, I generally see the exercise bench being used as a regular bench, and have never seen a grown-up using any of the other equipment.


Age suitability of play equipment: The multiplicity and diversity of the equipment make the playground suitable for toddlers and older children alike.


Seating: Plenty of benches -- many in well-shaded areas.
Just outside the park proper, on the Hildesheimer side, an S-shaped stone bench snakes picturesquely around a tree. On the Hatzefira side, just across from the minimarket
(and in direct line of the foot traffic from Emek Refaim) there are benches facing the street. Overall, a sociable ambience.

Snack factor: Minimarket Maalomi directly across the street provides the full range of ice creams, salty and sweet snacks, plus a variety of upscale/American/healthy items, in keeping with the character of the German Colony.

Chevra (schmooze factor): This park has the advantage of its proximity to Emek Refaim, as well as to several schools and kindergartens -- factors that attract a wide range of age groups to it and ensure the social and ethnic diversity of its users. One encounters here permanent residents, tourists, students. Lots of locals pass through with their dogs -- a plus from the point of view of entertaining young children.
(Despite the removal of the "litter-box" during the recent renovation, there is still a sizable feline presence as well.) One often sees elderly people, some in wheelchairs, accompanied by foreign caregivers. On a given morning spent here, I might run into a couple of people I already know, while also getting into conversations (sometimes deep ones) with people I've never met before. On one memorable occasion, a group of some half-dozen women, most of whom did not know each other previously, got into a lively debate over the relative advantages and disadvantages of the Chorev and Makor Chaim elementary schools. Is it the crossroads character of the park that facilitates interaction? Does its openness on three sides conduce to openness at the interpersonal level as well?

Multiple uses within the park:
-- Play (and exercise) equipment that suits a range of ages.
-- Seating clusters that are distinct without being isolated.

Criticism:

-- The renovation that took place three years ago, though it vastly improved the park's play equipment, actually undermined its multi-use status. Prior to the renovation, one entire end of the park consisted of a lawn -- a raised mound of grass that constituted a separate and distinct area within the park. During the renovation the lawn was scooped out and paved over, and replaced with exercise equipment which, as I noted above, may not have been the best possible use of the space. I personally miss the lawn and feel that it added a dimension that is now lacking. People brought blankets and picnicked there; students snoozed there during breaks; it was yet another area for children to investigate when they tired of the play equipment.

This latter point is an important one: playground landscaping should take into account the fact that children want and need bits of nature to explore. One can't chain them to the play equipment -- slide, or else!

Likewise, the shrubbery lining the park's perimeter was fenced off, thinned out and overly "manicured." The pre-renovation shrubbery was much more open and inviting to children. I remember my older kids hiding among the bushes, finding various germ-encrusted treasures there ...
Before the renovation, this gnarled old tree had a wooden bench all around it -- another quirky feature that kids (and adults) liked. Basically, the renovation somewhat eroded the park's distinctive character -- made it more "generic," in addition to curtailing the variety of uses within it.

Still, you can't really ruin a park that has so much going for it in terms of location, shade, and openness.


Beyond the park (services and amenities available in the vincinity of HaTzefira St.):

-- Emek Refaim Street, a major thoroughfare and commercial hub, is a block away. Alongside trendy cafes and upscale shopping, Emek Refaim is home to more mundane amenities such as a smallish supermarket, a post office, a stationery store, and medical clinics, meaning that various everyday errands can be appended to the park outing.
-- Kindergartens, an elementary school and high school are clustered at the end of Hatzefira Street.
-- Grocery across the street.
-- Natural History Museum a few minutes' walk away.
-- The park's location at an intersection, multiple entry points and general open feel attract passersby (or "passers-through") of all stripes -- dog walkers, people on their way to work, school, etc.


Other nearby attractions: The eateries of Emek Refaim, and the taxidermy collection/weird 1950s-era high school science projects on display at the Jerusalem Natural History Museum, are of obvious interest to families. But HaTzefira Street in general is worth getting to know. It has a few architecturally distinguished buildings a good deal of greenery, and a couple of funky establishments -- a hole-in-the-wall pizza parlor and this tiny high-end toy store, Ritch-Ratch,
whose merchandise consists exclusively of imported wooden playthings. The store, owned by a veteran local resident, sold sewing notions until the abrupt switch was made a few years ago to wooden toys. The merchandise is actually very appealing; it might be hard to drag small children away from it. The store's sign still features a zipper and proclaims the availability of sewing items. I strongly suspect that one could still obtain a spool of thread here on personal appeal to the owner.


Hatzefira Street starts at Emek Refaim and terminates in a large parking lot, serving a cluster of kindergartens and schools. If you turn from the parking lot up the path that starts out from this little sport center pictured at left, you will come to a kind of farm/petting zoo belonging to a high school. The path zig-zags and includes a few steps, though nothing too difficult to negotiate with a stroller.


The petting zoo is not normally open to the public (during the school year I saw a sign stating that it was open on Thursdays from 4-6 pm, but the sign disappeared once the school year ended). However, the animals -- mainly goats, ducks, chickens and turkeys -- are clearly visible, and small children can be entertained here for ... oh, at least a few minutes ...

Back to the playground

When my older children were small, I often took them to playgrounds outside of our neighborhood, which was then (and is still, 9 years later) under development and, consequently, lacking in shade -- the main factor determining a playground's usability between 9:00 am and 4:00 pm. During the long summers when my three "musketeers" were babies, toddlers and preschoolers, it seemed I was always chasing after shade. I developed a certain expertise regarding the green spaces of central and southern Jerusalem -- could tell you, for any given park, which corners and what play equipment remained tolerable at what hours.

A few years went by. The musketeers turned into schoolboys, and playground outings became a thing of the past. I moved on -- into middle age, a more substantial work schedule out of the home, a new routine ... until little "Midlife Surprise" made her appearance.

Returning to young motherhood in one's mid-forties, after a longish hiatus, is an interesting phenomenon in and of itself; were I more of a mommy blogger I would write about it in depth -- well, maybe someday I will. Within the context of this urbanist blog, however, I will simply point out that the intervening years, my advancing age, and the fact that I have been dealing this time around with only one baby/toddler, have all helped to make me more reflective than I was in the past about the environments in which my childrearing activities are taking place. Whether that translates into more effective parenting, only time will tell. But it does unquestionably translate into an impulse to analyze the surroundings in which I spend time with my young daughter.

In the musketeer days I would just pile the crew into the Mom-mobile and take off for someplace shady, without subjecting my destination decisions to any particular analysis. Whereas now the playground outings are informed by a spirit of reminiscence and of comparison at several years' remove -- a state of mind in which attention can be paid to the disparate elements that make up one's surroundings. Moreover, having spent most of the last decade coping with the problems posed by defective neighborhood design, I've acquired a conceptual framework for analyzing the public spaces that I and my little one frequent.

The foregoing is by way of introduction to a series that I wish to present on parks and playgrounds in Jerusalem. I will, G-d willing, be taking a close look at what makes these places "tick" (or not). I hope that the series will be useful to mothers and others looking for good places in Jerusalem in which to spend time with (or without) children.


The series will discuss/rate playgrounds based on a number of set criteria. Some of these criteria will be self-evident and technical, e.g., level of shade, quality of play equipment. Other criteria will be informed by a New Urbanist sensibility. In particular, I will be looking at the mixed-use features of parks and playgrounds -- both vis-à-vis their surrounding areas, and vis-à-vis themselves. That is to say, I will discuss the degree to which a given park is accessible to, or isolated from, other land uses such as commercial activities, schools, public/municipal services, and other attractions that a parent might want to know about. I will also discuss the degree to which a given park's design facilitates diverse uses within it, e.g. play equipment for different age groups, picnic areas, lawns, shrubbery, paths for bicycling/tricycling, etc.

Walls and values

My basic assumption is that architecture and neighborhood design reflect values.

What values are embodied in the buildings pictured at left -- a residential project in one of Jerusalem's newer, peripheral neighborhoods?

More precisely, what prominent feature of the project reflects values that are skewed -- from an urbanist point of view, at least?

Imagine that the wall surrounding the project weren't there. I'm not a real estate marketer, so I don't have simulation software handy. But let's try to envision what the project -- or rather, the semi-public area fronting the project -- would look like in the absence of that wall.

What you would end up with is something not too dissimilar to this older building in Jerusalem's prestigious Katamon area:

Both buildings, the one in the newer neighborhood and the older Katamon one, have parking at ground level. But in Katamon a passerby can see the cars. This may not be an attractive sight in and of itself; however, that is not the whole picture. The area in front of the Katamon building is open; one has an unobstructed view of the building entrance, as well as of human traffic into and out of the building. (Of course I don't mean this in a voyeuristic sense, but rather in the sense of a passerby's peripheral awareness -- at once reassuring and stimulating -- of human activity in and around the building.) An ambience of sociability prevails; the building communicates with the street. This sense of human activity goes a long way toward mitigating the aesthetic "blemish" of the cars parked under and around the building.

Moreover, the communication is two-way: anyone exiting the building (whether to get into their car or to continue on foot) will have an immediate view of the street scene before them. They can greet neighbors, assess the weather and the overall mood of the street; they will be influenced, in the most natural way, by the street atmosphere as they encounter it on their emergence from the building. Perhaps a group of laughing schoolchildren will raise a smile on their lips; maybe they'll see someone trip over a section of broken pavement and make a mental note to call the municipality about it. Whatever they see or hear, they will have interacted in some way with the street.

By contrast, the wall fronting the project in the newer neighborhood simply hides all signs of life, both from passersby and from the building residents. What could be more depressing than to walk out of one's building and be confronted by a sterile stone wall? And what could be more alienating to a passerby on the sidewalk, than a wall such as the one pictured at right?

The buildings in this project are by no means unattractive. When we leave the external wall out of the equation, they even compare favorably with the one in Katamon pictured above. What a pity that the project designers felt the need to deface their own handiwork with this nonsensical wall -- a wall that serves no structural purpose, whose sole raison d'etre is to ensure that the building residents see as little as possible of their neighbors, and vice versa.

Superfluous walls are a recurring motif in this newer Jerusalem neighborhood. The neighborhood's name has the Hebrew word for "wall" in it, and one feels as though the metaphor has been taken to an insane extreme. In my last post I described the crypt-like atmosphere of a playground surrounded by a wall (where a simple metal railing ought to have sufficed). There are many other examples. Here, for instance, one finds a wall placed directly in front of a building entrance, for no apparent purpose other than that of concealing the entrance from passersby:



This is the view from behind the wall (the mailboxes could, obviously, have been placed elsewhere, e.g., next to the building door):

Apparently, the project architect felt that only the building residents should be entitled to see the tiny patch of shrubbery near the entrance. Should a passerby on the sidewalk happen to catch a glimpse of it, that would be tantamount to an invasion of the residents' privacy.

The architect also seems to have felt that the building residents would prefer to see a wall as they exit the building, rather than the sidewalk, as in most normal Jerusalem architecture of the previous century.

This architectural style constitutes a clear departure from the past -- aesthetically and morally.

Why this fear of seeing one's neighbors? Of being seen? Why the obsession with privacy, at the expense of any normal, natural concern for the public sphere? From where did we get the idea that it is okay to dishonor the street?

I get it that Israelis want more luxurious living conditions than those offered by the typical apartment building of 30 or 40 years ago. The exposure to Western standards -- to the glimpses of suburban home decor that abound on American television -- has likely changed everyone's outlook, and driven demand for larger apartments and for a "mifrat techni ashir" -- the "high-caliber" specifications that are always being touted by new residential projects and which are supposed to make buyers feel that they are getting something exceptional.

I can understand that Israelis want a reprieve from the tiny apartments and modest conditions of past decades. But I fail to understand why one's privacy and quality of life are "hurt" when a passerby gets to see the outside of one's building. Why do we have to feel that our standard of living in the private sphere can be ensured only by showing contempt for the public sphere, or by doing away with it entirely?

A tomb with a view

The main impetus behind this blog is a nagging feeling that common sense is being increasingly abandoned in current Jerusalem construction practice. Basically, time-honored rules for building pleasant and attractive edifices, streets and facilities have been forgotten, and a new set of rules, as rigid as they are illogical, has been adopted.

What makes a playground a fun and happy place to spend time in?

Visibility, for starters.

People like to see their friends and neighbors. When I pass by a playground, I want to see who's in it. Maybe I'll join them! When I'm sitting in a playground with my kids, I want to see who's passing by on the sidewalk. Maybe I'll call to them and they'll join me! Young children in general love to stand by park fences and peer between the bars at the world around them. They enjoy watching people, cars, motorcycles, strollers with other young children, garbage trucks, police cars, etc., pass by.

But the folks who design playgrounds these days in Jerusalem have other priorities.
Here is a "top-secret" playground in one of Jerusalem's newer, peripheral neighborhoods:




The play-crypt ... What's on the other side of the stone wall? Why, the sidewalk, of course. Wouldn't want to expose anyone in the playground to that, would we?




My, that bench looks inviting, doesn't it?




What's really weird is that from the other side of the playground you can see out to the far reaches of the neighborhood, and beyond:
A tomb with a view!



The new construction rules in Jerusalem seem to be:
1)If you can build a wall, do it.
2)If you can block people's view of the street in front of them, do it.
3)Force people to look out at what's far away from them. Call it "nof" ("a view"). They'll think they're getting something good, and won't miss the human-scaled view they're being deprived of.
4)Make sure to keep trees out of children's play areas. Don't just delay planting them: leave no space in which to plant them. That way you can ensure permanent shadelessness, and consequent non-use of the playground during most daytime hours.