Play Infrastructure: A Strategy for Building Social Capital

The great challenge facing us today is how to build a people-centered life and a people-centered world. 
—Vivek H Murthy, M.D. United States Surgeon General

When people catalog the world’s significant problems, urban planning and infrastructure are not on that list. The populace is not interested in the topic at all. However, the United States Census Bureau estimates that 80.7% of U.S. citizens live in urban areas. Unknowingly where people live has a significant impact on their wellness. Current urban planning paradigms create cities’ that are rife with lonely people. However, some planners and policymakers attempt to support human connection and strengthen the community by designing green places, people-focused housing, and convivial spaces. This is a start, but insufficient. Infrastructure designed to build social capital ought to include opportunities for play to facilitate and sustain relationships. Play is a powerful way to mediate interaction and generate directed purpose. This paper provokes designers to consider what frameworks or models are needed to create infrastructure for play because it has the power to make us less lonely.

I have lived in several neighborhoods in Boston, from Cambridge to Charlestown, and now I call the Seaport home. What is fascinating to me about this area is that it did not exist when I last lived in Boston some 12ish years ago. As a former industrial site—full of parking lots and warehouses—it has undergone extensive development. The completion of the infamous Central Artery/Tunnel Project —The Big Dig, the megaproject that rerouted I-93, the central highway through the heart of the city—development in the Seaport boomed. Suddenly it became easier to reach; as a result, developers built mix-use residential and office buildings, a contemporary art museum, restaurants, and hotels. I live in a building with over 250 apartment units connected to two other similar-sized tower buildings. My home has 11,000 square feet of shared space in which few people choose not to interact with each other.

Researchers have understood for a long time that the physical spaces of buildings and public spaces shape our behavior—and can encourage people to socialize or turn away from each other (Halpern 1995, 173). High-rise buildings (like the one I live in), because of their scale, separate people from activities on the street, disregarding Jane Jacobs's recommendations (54). In addition, large buildings lack significant green space and reduce chance encounters. Sizable low-income housing complexes can also make residents feel isolated from and inferior to the rest of the city (Molzner par 2).

Aesthetics play a role in encouraging social interaction. Humans are charmed by green spaces and approachable buildings. The glass and concrete of our architecture that lacks natural elements can be off-putting. Moreover, hostile architecture, a design type that either restricts or deters unwanted behaviors, has been proliferating. For example, the “Camden Bench,” by Factory Furniture, is sculpted concrete with a special coating making it impervious to graffiti, its angles repel skateboards, and the cambered top prevents sleeping (Deutinger 84). Furthermore, there is a lack of accessibility for senior citizens and people with disabilities, who are most vulnerable to social isolation.

In the United States, our infrastructure is deficient in public transportation, sidewalks, and bike lanes. Transit frameworks allow for interaction and connect people with their community. Historically cars have been given priority over people’s needs and desires, and because of this, we suffer from high death rates among pedestrians and cyclists. Per mile, then in our peer countries, pedestrian fatality rates are “5–10 times higher,” and cyclist fatalities are “4–7 times higher” (Buehler and Pucher 4). Streets with two traffic lanes in both directions in the very walkable city of New York have even been labeled “death zones” because of their high fatality records. Atlantic Avenue in New York City was described as the “killing fields of the city.” This April (2023), fifteen pedestrian deaths occurred in the first 24 days (Bellafante par 3).

Our physical infrastructure tells us something about who we are; it reveals the networks we have designed and created or lack thereof. If we ask for an infrastructure comprised of easy parking, fast streets and highways, individualized homes, and tall office towers, we will get that. However, our demands have created dangerous pedestrian conditions, isolation, and loneliness. David Halpern, a British civil servant who heads the Behavioral Insights Team in the UK, believes in advocating for safer and social public spaces. Consequently, architects and planners need to pay more attention to what research has to say about the social impacts of their design work.

When architects and planners pay attention, they will notice that infrastructural design is a factor in creating an epidemic of loneliness. You would think that we were all happy to see each other after the COVID-19 global pandemic, yet, statistics show that people spend even less time together than before the pandemic (Demarinis 2). Loneliness is a subjective feeling; nevertheless, mental health professionals define loneliness as a gap between the level of connectedness you want and what you have. The feeling can have devastating health effects on our bodies and minds. According to Dr. John Cacioppo’s research, it erodes the social fabric. When our stress hormones spike among strangers, we may be more susceptible to feelings of cultural bias and engage in racial stereotyping and discriminatory practices. We will misinterpret social cues and see social threats where none exist (Murthy 42). When looking at loneliness through the lens of history and biology, John and his team found that the human need for social connection is more than a simple feeling or convenience—it is a biological and social imperative rooted in thousands of years of human evolution. Moreover, loneliness, he maintained, has evolved as a warning signal to satisfy that need (Murthy 29). Loneliness sends our bodies into a hyper-vigilant self-preservation mode, causing us to misread harmless situations as threats. This condition contradicts our historical default, which regards interdependence and collaboration with others as necessary in our lives.

In his formative research on social capital, Harvard professor Robert Putnam described the crumbling of social networks and norms in the US that began in the latter third of the twentieth century. His work found that various measures of social engagement had declined precipitously—including religious participation, memberships in community organizations, and the frequency with which people invited friends to their homes. The consequences of declining social capital on overall health and happiness in the United States are significant because it profoundly matters in our lives (Putnam 326).

Technology attempts to connect us through numerous social platforms. These tools have been beneficial in some ways but detrimental to offline interaction and face-to-face connections required to alleviate loneliness (Putnam 415). Nevertheless, MIT professor Sherry Turkle concluded that technology does not fully support human relationships. In her work, she observes that “our rapturous submission to digital technology has led to an atrophying of human capacities like empathy and self-reflection” (Franzen par 3). Turkle is convinced it is time to reassert our needs and control technologies’ overwhelming march towards domination.

Putnam’s research substantiates that social connection matters to our lives most profoundly. Moreover, we know that digital platforms designed for social interaction do not provide the connection we seek. Architectural and planning responses to the loneliness epidemic are changing public housing density and location, creating parks and green spaces, community gardens, and planning for wider sidewalks with spaces encouraging people to socialize. They are also helping to bring intergenerational crowds together, which benefits senior citizens who have suffered most from social isolation in cities. Nevertheless, David Halpern argues that you need a few essential elements to establish social capital. Social capital in kinship, work-based, or interest-based groups have three components, “a cluster of norms, values, and expectancies that group members share, and — punishments and rewards — that help maintain the network.” Some institutions do this incredibly well. For example, sports teams, the military, and universities. What they have in common is bringing together people often of very different backgrounds and engaging them in a common goal. (Halpern 2005 10)

Play infrastructure for adults is not an affordance often discussed by planners or policymakers. Within play, you can find the same components described by Halpern; the act is a directed interaction where people engage in common goals that foster human connection. I know this is an ambitious and romantic idea, Yet, play is essential as a way of knowing, engaging, and being in the world. As an act, play can connect us to others, alleviate loneliness and help us live a healthy, mature, and complete life.  For this reason, understanding what play is for adults and what affordances are required is essential.

Figure 1: Potential Play Sites in the Seaport, Images by Author

What does an infrastructure dedicated to play look like? On walks around the Seaport neighborhood, I see a few spaces for play and social interaction. The design firm Sasaki was tasked with creating the master plan (completion date t.b.d.), which includes primarily mixed-use business and residential environments with simple pedestrian green space. The few play spaces I have identified are a half-court for basketball next to a small playground for children and an open green for kinesthetic play. In addition, the ICA Museum places the Herman Miller Magis Spun Chair, which are top-like chairs that I often see children and adults happily playing with. There are also bike lanes and social spaces with movable seating. In its current state, only a few spaces have a clear and fixed purpose.

Play resists definition but can be identified as an experience that is a complex set of chosen behaviors characterized by specific qualities which exist on a spectrum of free uncontrolled to, competitive, and controlled.  As an act, it is complicated yet essential. Researcher Miguel Sicart writes, “Through play, we experience the world, we construct it, and we destroy it, and we explore who we are, and what we can say“ (2014, 5). He encourages people to consider play as an ecology. In this ecology, games are economically dominant, but they do not matter as much…they are a manifestation of a form of play. The ecology includes ritual, imaginative, body, object, rough, and dark play. These fall on a spectrum from free and uncontrolled to competitive and controlled. It is also essential to recognize that you can introduce playfulness to any activity, but it is not necessarily playing. Playfulness and play diverge because play is autotelic, an activity with its own purpose; we play because we want to play. Playfulness is an attitude and projection of characteristics into a situation/or situations; it is not autotelic. Another play researcher, Dr. Stuart Brown, recognized that not all enjoy play similarly. His research has cataloged a series of play personalities, from the joker to the kinesthetic, to the explorers, competitors, and storytellers.

Figure 2: Concept Map Adult Play: Created by Author

Several tangible examples of play infrastructure are, first and most commonly, sports fields and courts for basketball, tennis, and the popular game pickleball. Bike paths, outdoor seating that is flexible for social activity, and tables for games like chess that we see so often in Harvard Square. These spaces are free and easy to use; people gather together for a directed purpose.

I have also noticed that dark play is afforded in the Seaport due to its expansive road systems and low granite walls. Dark play uses infrastructure in an unplanned and emergent manner.  The disruptive act breaks a context’s gentrified nature; it is inherently dangerous, appropriating structures and institutions to hazardously engage with them in a manner that mocks them (Sicart 2014, 15). Dark players look at infrastructure and see opportunities, determining new freedoms for a seemingly fixed structure. Skateboarding is the most common example. Skateboarders are urban appropriators; they open up a city that may seem too conventional viewers as limiting and restrictive. These urban appropriative behaviors are often seen as a nuisance, yet are also highly creative and helpful for designers to understand that what they create can always be re-appropriated.

Urban dirt biking is another form of dark play for primarily Black, low-income residents. In cities like “New York to Paris, Philadelphia to its spiritual home in Baltimore, urban dirt bike riding is considered by many a crime and a dangerous public nuisance.” Yet it is also a form of recreation that is positive for people, “Dirt bikes saved my life, and gave me a reason to want to live and go on.” (Winny, par 4) On warm weekend nights, I often hear before I see the bikers performing tricks on Seaport Boulevard in joyful exuberance.

MIT researcher Eric Zimmerman has declared that we are in a century of play. Nevertheless, if you scrutinize the U.S. landscape, it does not feel that way. Most cities provide people with shelter, work, and some leisure functions but are unsuitable for many types of play. That raises the question, how can we design a city that affords play infrastructure? Affordance for play in the built environment requires a spectrum to exist. Because play operates on a spectrum from open emergent structures that are non-competitive to a progressive structure with competition, players will need divergent affordances. James Gibson developed the term affordance from ecological psychology to denote action possibilities provided by the actor in an environment. Donald Norman, the renowned designer researcher, applied this concept and determined that affordances are vital to good design. “Affordances provide strong clues to the operations of things. Plates are for pushing. Knobs are for turning. Slots are for inserting things into. When affordances are taken advantage of, the user knows what to do just by looking: no picture, label, or instruction needed” (Norman 9). A pivotal characteristic to remember is that play is emergent, meaning it is a process of coming into being through interaction. This characterizes a constant change depending on the place, people, and things involved in the act. Designers creating play infrastructure must consider the relational nature of environmental interaction. Some players are afforded opportunities with toys or objects, for example, skateboards or dirt bikes, and creatively remake the city for their purposes. For others, clarity and structure are needed to play and interact. The property of the environment can also be measured and studied objectively.

FRAMEWORKS FOR PLAY
Creating joyful, freeing situations and open-ended environments through play can create a more social, playful city even though there is research on this topic, notably, The Ludic City by Quentin Stevens and Transforming Public Space through Play by Gregor H. Mews. This work does not seem widely celebrated or attractive to the general population and practitioners. Both these books study how urban open spaces are used for play, but they lack clear, operational-level frameworks to guide design work for play. As urban designers desire to build social places, they will need new methods for research and practice, perhaps borrowed from domains like user research and interaction design. Interaction design is highly people focused and has a rich history/knowledge of designing for people, with an understanding of how experiences unfold over time through scaffolded interactions.

What are play experiences, and how can infrastructure afford those experiences?
Academic Jesper Falck Legaard proposes a Play Blueprint (Figure 3) as a scaffold for understanding play experiences. Within the blueprint, a focus on the actions of investigation, construction, bodily activities, and storytelling are all qualities of the built environment that can afford play. “Play Blueprint allows us to conceptually divide the play experience into components and experiences” (Falck Legaard 50), thus allowing for definition and design work to begin.


Figure 3: Play Blueprint by Jesper Falck Legaard

Designers can create affordances for playful acts when there is a complete understanding of what play is. Humans are hard-wired to connect and cooperate, but design can overwrite this. Forced or uncontrolled social interaction can be unpleasant for most people. Moreover, certain restrictions, such as fences, create positive social relationships because people have a choice to interact. In the same way, physical structures create positive or negative social interactions, and play possesses qualities that design can exploit, from goal-oriented play, to creative and improvised. How or even if this could be done in infrastructure is yet to be determined.

What can we learn from our existing play infrastructure?
In interaction design, products are never finished. Design is always in a cycle of learning from people, prototyping, and testing. Designing for play can seem broad, as it can take many forms, from the physical to the digital and even other ephemeral experiences. Moreover, a multi-faceted model for play can only be created when we fully understand how it operates in our infrastructure today. In Boston, we can learn about the growing network of bike lanes, city bikes, community sailing, rowing programs, movable seating for socializing, and green space for sports. Are these spaces successful in cultivating social capital, and why? It is necessary to survey, research, and support existing play infrastructure.

What is the role of digital infrastructure in supporting play infrastructure?
Miguel Sicart wrote a provocation to designers and scholars to consider the possibilities of transforming cities for play but a type of play afforded by a city’s data. He argues that “the data produced and used in smart cities should not necessarily be presented as a utility for citizens. It should be presented as a prop for play, as games, and as the source for toys and playgrounds. Data-rich cities can become playable, and, by becoming such, they can become more human, more inclusive spaces.” (2016, 27) Playable City, a project in Bristol, England, does just that and extends an open and free invitation to play in public space to begin a conversation about the kind of city you want to live in. Prompting unusual interaction moments unlocks a social dialogue, bringing the citizens into a city development conversation. Fabio Duarte and Richard Alvarez also address the use of technology in their new book Urban Play. They argue that technology has the transformative power to explore new territories for creating innovative urban spaces.

In what ways can open or emergent infrastructure afford play?
Open or emergent infrastructure is defined as systems of interrelated components that can be arranged as makers see fit and are commonly used in digital infrastructure. This idea and its application to physical infrastructure is in its infancy. However, the design discipline has a long history of borrowing from other disciplines and learning from natural systems. For example, Matthew Gandy has developed a body of research on the spontaneous dynamics of urban nature in city wastelands. How might we learn from how plants grow, adapt, and thrive in spaces that were not planned for them? Alternatively, the Italian semiotician Umberto Eco proposed a participatory approach to visual arts, music, and literature in his book Open Work. Eco defines the term "open" in a tangible sense as works that are left unfinished; the author seems to hand them on to the user/performer/maker, more or less like the components of a construction kit. Curator Nicholas Bourriaud also proposed an open emerged structure to art called Relational Aesthetics. This idea argued that creative spaces were liminal, unbound by the usual pressures and rhythms of every day, and well-suited for engaging people to be receptive to new modes of thinking and acting. Like these models, play is flexible and fluid, adapting and co-opting spaces for its purpose.

CONCLUSION / SUMMARY
Infrastructure is not a fixed category of objects but a vague understanding of what operates between people, people and objects, and even object to object. The nature of play for adults is similar in this way, a fuzzy, contextual, and emergent act; it supports us and should be supported by us. Planners and policymakers know that infrastructure design profoundly impacts our social interactions. It is less common today for us to gather with neighbors for dinner, engage in a casual discussion on the street, or play basketball with strangers. Because of this, many are profoundly lonely. Alleviating this condition will take a multifaceted approach, focusing on building infrastructure that meets humans’ innate social connection needs. Designers should include play infrastructure for adults when establishing design models for social capital. Infrastructure planning advocating for play will require civic leadership, public funding, and designers with clear frameworks for designing these spaces to accommodate play in all its numerous forms.

Future work on this topic will be required to thoroughly examine through mapping current play infrastructure, both public and private. In addition, because play is an emergent activity, it would benefit from using open and emergent structures. In this way, our society can plan and design open, flexible spaces that afford creative re-configurations to support play. Though this design area is at the outset of forming, there might be opportunities to research these frameworks through and with play.

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