## Assignment 1

How playgrounds keep the old young

1 Bernd Zimmermann (71) cheerfully swivels his hips on a stainless steel machine that reminds him of doing the twist 40 years earlier. At the same time, Ulrike Bernal (69) is playing with two large red plastic plates, spinning them with intense concentration. The sign outside the first playground for pensioners in Germany says that entry is only allowed under adult supervision, but that is not much of a problem for Mr Zimmermann or Ms Bernal. They and other healthy pensioners working out in the playground are part of a remarkable experiment aimed at making elderly people physically fitter. Germany has 16 million people over the age of 65. Pensioners are taking over power while children are rapidly becoming extinct.

2 “I come every day for about half an hour and I like the leg-swing best,” Mr Zimmermann says. He worked as a car mechanic, has arthritis and finds that the swing has started to help him after only two weeks. The playground for the elderly was opened in the Prussia Park in Berlin and the eight pieces of apparatus cost €20,000 which is a fraction of the cost of building a children’s playground.

3 Children with an accompanying adult are welcome too in Germany’s new pensioner play areas. The elderly themselves, however, disapprove of the youngsters, referring to damage to equipment, and are fearful of drug dealers moving in. Children’s playgrounds in Germany, as in Britain, used to be places where teenagers hung out: listening to music, flirting, sneering at the little kids and smoking. To prevent this happening in pensioners’ playgrounds, the benches have been removed and smoking is forbidden. Moreover all equipment on the terrain has been made graffiti-proof.

4 The scheme has been brought to Germany by Renate Zeumer, who was impressed by the way that China had placed keep-fit equipment in public places. Now other playgrounds are being planned across the country. Most will be privately sponsored. The same ground rules apply: no swings, no slides and no bouncy castles. Germany is the most heavily insured country in the world and no local council wants to risk a playful pensioner having to be stretchered off for an emergency hip replacement!