Play's the Thing

Playborhood - "sense of community" built by hand

• Playborhood is a book.
• Playborhood is a website and a blog.
• Playborhood is a way to raise kids to be independent, happy, and confident.
• Playborhood is building a community - not with smart design or ideology, but with old-fashioned values and effort that real people, living in real neighborhoods, make happen.

The Weekly Standard's article, "Play's the Thing" featured the book, "Playborhood," by Mike Lanza. The concept of playborhood may take some oldsters back to a time before TV, before computers and video games, before empty streets and silent neighborhoods.  It was a time when kids made their own fun - when a kid could go to a friend's house uninvited to play, or stay out all day with a pack of kids roaming far and wide doing who knows what, and not get in trouble as long as you got home before dinner.

Mike Lanza learned what parents all over learn - that kids don't go out and play anymore.  And because he wanted something different for his children, he did something about it.  He created a place for his kids and neighborhood kids to go, and allowed his kids to roam.  What Lanza does cannot be replicated by government.  Maybe putting in a park nearby, but government can't build a neighborhood or a community.  That has to come from the neighbors themselves.  And the neighbors have to be the ones who direct the making of the community.  The way we live and raise our children will be decided from the bottom up, as it was and in the past should be in the future.

See the Playborhood blog, and read Lanza's post about suburbs.  There are a lot of great postings here, so even if you don't have kids anymore, enjoy the memories.  

The Playborhood sign is for sale on the website and Amazon.