plastic playground

Adult playgrounds offer an array of exercise equipment to help New Yorkers fight the fat for free.

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New York City has introduced playgrounds for adults, moving the notion away from them being strictly for children.

In an effort to produce healthier lifestyles, the Parks Department has set up a bunch of playgrounds that have the look and feel of a children's space. These, however, lack slides and other traditional children's playground equipment, instead including regular gym equipment, and a track.

[Nancy Prince, Deputy Design Chief for NYC Parks & Recreation Department]:
"To a lot of people this looks like children's play equipment and it's the same materials, the same durable materials, but it's just more customized to be this more gym-type outdoor equipment. So just as we can put a lot of fitness activities and play activities for kids, we can add this to our whole component of things for adults."

The first playground has been tested for the past two years at the Macombs Dam Park in the Bronx, at the foot of Yankee Stadium.

It is not the first time the city has placed outdoor exercise equipment in its parks, but it has not done it at a level like this.

[Nancy Prince, Deputy Design Chief for NYC Parks & Recreation Department]:
"We have been putting in some adult exercise equipment for adults, pieces here and there since the 1930s, but this is a new concept where we have a whole bunch of units and the individual units target individual muscle groups on the body, very much like the gyms or recreation center exercise areas. So it's a new idea to have have it in parks, have it free, take it outside into the environment."

The concept has been in place in China and some parts of Europe for some time, a borrowed attempt to combat obesity. And the cost for such healthy living seems agreeable for some of its attendants.

[Angel Diaz]:
"It's free. It's a nice place. It's not too crowded. You come early, it's peaceful and you love it because you can come here and you can focus, you can meditate, work out and nobody bothers you, you know. You go to the gym and sometimes there are so many people that can't... but here, you come. If you come a little later, you might but if you come early, this is what you're seeing."

According to the city, the response to the gym has been overwhelming, and there are plans to build at least ten new such playgrounds.