Map of Play Helps Parents Find Local Playgrounds

If you have ever travelled to another state and wondered where you could take your children to play, you’re not alone. 

Perhaps your kids are growing out of their neighborhood park, and you’d like to know what features the playground across town has to offer. 

Thanks to an online guide created by national nonprofit KaBOOM!, parents of playful kids won’t have to guess what the park across town is like or worry about finding play areas near them. 

“We have a new tool called Map of Play. It’s a finder tool where people type in a zip code, city and state to find play spaces in their area,“ KaBOOM! mapping coordinator Susanne Paul said. 

“We are building a comprehensive directory that allows people to see what play spaces are in their community, and the next town over.” 

KaBOOM! is a Washington, D.C. based company that is "dedicated to saving play in America". While partnering with local governments and community centers to plan and build play areas, the company recognized a need to catalog, every playground in the country. 

An older version of the map was developed years ago, but KaBOOM! began beta testing the new version of Map of Play in June. The guide allows users to enter pertinent information for any play area, including location, rating and features, and submit it to the database. The company then verifies the information and in turn creates a listing for the park. 

KaBOOM! compiles data from a variety of sources, including its own Playful City USA initiative and its local partnerships, but Paul stressed that her company can’t do it alone. 

How You Can Get Involved

“KaBOOM! could never visit every playground in the country, so we rely on the people who are out there in the communities with their kids,” she explained. 

“There are a lot of people super excited about this,” she added, noting a woman in Arizona who is determined to map every playspace in her area. 

As of this writing, the organization had 90,000 records of playgrounds from around the country in its database; Paul says KaBOOM! wants to double or triple that number through Map of Play. 

By reaching out to the people who use the play areas the most — citizens of the communities — KaBOOM! also hopes to eliminate areas of the country that don’t have playspaces for their residences. 

“We are trying to use this information to map “play deserts,” areas where people don’t have access to any playgrounds,” she explained. “And when we find areas that don’t have any playspaces, we will work with community partners to help provide one.” 

“If you ask agencies in this country how many playgrounds exist, nobody can really answer that because they don’t know,” she added. “There is a need to collect this information.” 

To catalog a playspace in your area, or to look for a playground or park near you, visit the Map of Play homepage on KaBOOM.org.

Where's the best playground in or around the Safety Harbor area? Post a comment below.