From Recess to Hang-Out: The Design of Open Space Opportunities.

In building a recent series of innovative community schools, Boston has created more diverse outdoor spaces than typically surround urban elementary schools. Being more complex both in program and design, the community schools have created complex patterns in use that were not anticipated. This research was commissioned to determine what has been happening in these newly conceived spaces and to recommend ways to design more usable open space areas. In this report "open space" is taken to include all outdoor areas: playgrounds, parking lots, entranceways, totlots, circulation areas, and miscellaneous left-over corners. A scenario provides a composite picture of a day at a hypothetical school. Ten functions that open spaces perform are identified and described in terms of activities they support. Then follows an analysis of the ways in which each of the community school open spaces creates the opportunities for these activities. Patterns emerge in the way open space opportunities are created and these patterns form the basis for recommendations that suggest how to support or discourage each of the ten open space functions. Several recommendations are put forth to reduce the problems at schools that must be sited next to parks. (Author/MLF)