Biking as Play: Copenhagen's Playgrounds
Today, our group visited one of Copenhagen’s playgrounds. The site included typical elements of any playground-swings, slides, climbing structures-yet the main attraction of our visit was the traffic playground. The playground design teaches young children how to bike, not only the physical skill of biking but also the traffic culture associated with biking in the city. Not long into our tour of the playground, I could not help but think, “This makes entirely too much sense to me.” The simulated environment allows children to learn how to navigate lanes, turn their bikes at intersections, stop at traffic lights, and know when it is time to go through the intersection, similar to how adolescents in the United States learn to drive a car. However, that the course is so well designed for young children, even toddlers (the instructor mentioned children start learning to ride a balance bike as early as two or three years old) really promotes an early adoption of biking as a transport mode,...