No more swinging good times: The changing face of the Singapore playground

SINGAPORE – Few thrills compare with letting loose on a swing. With the wind tickling your face and momentum propelling you through the air, it sometimes feels like the closest thing to flying.

Many Singapore residents have fond memories of such carefree hours at the playground, waiting their turn on those coveted seats, kicking their feet and watching the sand peel away as they are lifted higher and higher into the sky.

Now all grown up, they are starting to notice that the swings of their childhood have gradually faded from view. It is an observation that has been raised in various forums – from the online agora of Reddit to, most recently, Parliament. 

During November’s session, Sembawang GRC MP Ng Shi Xuan asked the Ministry of National Development (MND) how many public playgrounds there are in Singapore, and how many of them have swings and sand play areas. He also wanted to know how such figures compare with a decade ago.

In a written reply, Minister for National Development Chee Hong Tat said there are around 2,800 public playgrounds in HDB estates and parks, adding that the number of playgrounds has increased over the years. He did not specify how many of them include swings.

However, playground manufacturers tell The Straits Times that as living spaces in Singapore grow ever tighter, some playgrounds lack sufficient space for swings.

Mr Jason Sim, 49, managing director of local playground and landscape consultancy Playpoint, says: “Swings have become less common because they require a large safety zone, which cannot overlap with the safety zones of other play equipment. As a result, a single set of swings can easily take up almost half the playground area, making them less efficient for compact sites.”

Under the 2017 edition of Singapore Standards 457, an industry-wide guide intended to reduce injuries by guiding the design, installation and maintenance of public-use play equipment, swings have to meet the following requirements: The safety zone surrounding the front and rear of a swing set has to be at least two times its height. That means a 2m-tall swing needs a buffer of around 8m.  

Other specifications include the materials used to build playgrounds, as well as a formula to limit a merry-go-round’s maximum speed.

According to MND, all vendors installing playgrounds must comply with these standards. Safety auditors from third-party certified playground safety inspectors also conduct checks to ensure requirements are met.

Improving play 

Still, guidelines alone cannot entirely stamp out safety concerns, and incidents do crop up occasionally.

In September, community news portal Stomp reported that a boy was injured while using a swing in Bishan. In June, a nine-year-old boy had to get his ruptured kidney removed after falling from the monkey bars and hitting a plastic partition in Bukit Batok West. In December 2024, a two-year-old girl was hit on the head by a falling metal bar at a Sengkang playground. 

According to MND, there was an annual average of 7,000 instances of public feedback on playgrounds from 2022 to 2024, amounting to 0.5 per cent of total annual municipal feedback. Common concerns centred on damaged or faulty playground components, as well as the cleanliness of the playgrounds. 

Maintenance aside, Singapore’s playgrounds have lots of room for improvement, says senior occupational therapist Jewel Yi, 34. She documents ineffective playground design on her Instagram account, @fixourplaygroundssg. 

A therapy session with a seven-year-old child with developmental differences first sparked her concerns. “I had hoped her parents could continue practising gross motor and play skills with her outside the therapy gym, but I quickly realised that many playgrounds are designed in ways that don’t make developmental sense,” she recounts. 

At an age-appropriate playground, she watched the child climb up with some assistance. But upon reaching a platform, she was unable to hoist herself up independently. She had to pull herself up a 2.5m height without proper handholds or footholds, as the smooth, oversized poles in place offered little grip.

“I’m not sure how her mum was supposed to help her navigate these spaces. Even for neurotypical children, such designs can be risky and unintuitive,” Ms Yi adds. 

It took multiple visits to various playgrounds before she was able to successfully locate a swing for this pupil, though when she finally tracked one down, it was far from the girl’s home, making regular access difficult.

“She is just one example, but in my work with many families, I often recommend finding playgrounds that offer intense movement input, yet it is surprisingly difficult to find any nearby that truly meets those needs.” 

She says many modern playgrounds seem built for visual appeal rather than meaningful, child-centred play. They are hampered by close-ended designs with poor play flow – some “stairs to nowhere”, for instance, leave children with few safe or rewarding payoffs like slides, while playgrounds that offer only one mode of exploration limit imaginative movement. 

As she and other parents have discovered, the devil is in the details. Overly large poles, lack of proper grip points and unsafe gaps high above ground make such spaces challenging for children with additional needs, as well as neurotypical kids with less upper-body strength. 

Mr Wayne Lai, a software engineer in his mid-30s who started LetzGoPlay, a database of over 1,500 playgrounds in Singapore, notes that while many playgrounds here are thoughtfully designed, toddlers like his three-year-old daughter struggle with certain models. 

“For example, certain net bridges can be intimidating or difficult for toddlers to cross due to their smaller feet. In such cases, a solid base beneath the netting could help alleviate safety concerns,” he says. 

“Some playgrounds also seem to maximise the use of limited space by fitting in too many elements, such as placing swings or sensory play areas under bridges or slides. While creative, this can sometimes result in tight spaces and awkward play flow.” 

Balancing risk and safety

On the flip side, Ms Yi has also come across playgrounds that overcompensate with designs so safe, they end up being boring. For example, “swings” that function more like low-to-the-ground wiggle chairs with limited movement, or slides so short as to be devoid of thrill. 

“When playgrounds lack opportunities for gross motor activity – like climbing, swinging, spinning and hanging – kids miss out on essential physical and sensory input. Over time, this can lead to weaker motor skills or reduced confidence,” she notes. 

She also laments the disappearance of sandpits or other soft materials that children can get their hands messy in. Rubber, said to be better in cushioning falls, now dominates playground flooring in Singapore. As a result, “they don’t have a lot of opportunities to express themselves”.

Ms Amber Lim, 31, account manager at playground-equipment manufacturer Kompan Singapore, points out a few issues with sand, namely maintenance and hygiene. It gets compacted over time, and needs to be raked or topped up every other month. Sand also wears down the nylon strands coating metal wires in some playground equipment. 

Besides, she muses: “What’s stopping the sand playground, which is open to everyone, from being a giant litter box for dogs and cats?” 

Growing risk aversion also means certain structures such as firemen poles, merry-go-rounds and banister bars have grown increasingly rare. 

“As soon as a few parents say it’s not safe, it becomes hard for us to propose these elements, even though by right, they pass our strict safety standards,” she says.  

While the company recognises that safety is a critical priority, it believes that risk, when appropriately designed and managed, plays an essential role in child development.

“if you don’t take risks in a safe environment, where are you going to take it? At home? Kids will start climbing doorframes. They are going to do handstands on the sofa and stuff like that.” 

Better, then, for them to run wild in a space that is tested and padded with EPDM (a synthetic rubber) flooring calculated to prevent fatal injuries.

Ms Evelyn Chan, 36, a senior occupational therapist at NTUC First Campus, echoes this sentiment. “By taking risks, children will be able to learn more about their bodies, what their bodies can do or cannot do. They develop a protective mechanism because they learn that if they do this or lean over in this way, they might fall down. So, it makes sure that they learn how to prevent themselves from getting seriously injured.” 

“Risk should come from navigating space, not from faulty equipment or poor design,” she says. 

Kompan’s approach, therefore, is to minimise the likelihood of serious injuries while letting children challenge themselves on elements like its supernova spinner – a slated, rotating ring which children can balance on while seated, lying or standing – in Ubi Grove. 

It subjects new concepts or equipment not yet covered by existing regulations to a rigorous risk-assessment process that includes early indoor trials and long-term field tests in controlled environments, to observe how children interact with the product in intended and unintended ways. 

After all, prescription is no guarantee of behaviour when children are involved. “No matter how safe the playground is, kids just somehow find ways to make it more ‘dangerous’. They will climb all over the structures and dangle from random poles,” observes father-of-three Daniel Ng, 38.

Together with his wife Gina Cheong, 37, he runs Aww Media, a company specialising in branding videos, and reviews playgrounds across Singapore on the couple’s Sunrise Odyssey social media accounts. 

“More importantly, parents and caretakers need to play an active role in ensuring their kids’ safety, and knowing where to draw the line. I mean, kids will be kids, we can’t stop them from climbing. The least we can do is to ensure their safety and be there to catch them if they were to slip.” 

Getting playgrounds right is crucial, stresses Ms Yi. While these playgrounds may be physically safe, they pose another risk to children. 

Those with no access to meaningful play spaces may “end up stuck at home, sitting in front of screens, overstimulated and underactive”, she says. 

Prime Minister Lawrence Wong sounded a similar warning in his 2025 National Day Rally speech, encouraging children to spend more time outdoors playing, making friends and being active, rather than being babysat by technology. 

“We are already seeing an epidemic of mental health issues in youth and children, and part of this is because kids have nowhere to relax, let off steam or simply play after a long school day,” adds Ms Yi. “Playgrounds are not just a luxury – they’re critical community spaces for healthy development.” 

What a fun playground looks like

But what makes a playground fun enough to occupy a restless child for an afternoon? 

To Mr Lai, the key is having a mix of age-appropriate elements and popular features such as slides, swings and trampolines. “Swings, in particular, are always a hit,” he says, citing the example of the playground on the fourth floor at Nex mall in Serangoon, where the two swings are often in constant use. 

A spacious layout with multiple slides or activity zones also helps ease congestion, especially during peak hours, he adds. 

Ms Chan takes note of environmental factors too: Is the playground located in a shaded area? Is there enough ventilation? Is it sufficiently far away from cars and roads? 

She hopes to come across more swings, and high elements such as rock walls and flying foxes – which tend to excite children – as well as inclusive designs which build on existing efforts. HDB rolled out guidelines to incorporate inclusive play elements into new playgrounds in 2014, resulting in the introduction of features like ramps. 

“There shouldn’t be a case where I go to a playground and find that it caters only to older or younger children. These spaces are also used by children who are neurodivergent or have physical disabilities, so they should be able to play alongside their peers instead of sitting in a corner,” she says. 

Additionally, she would like to see playgrounds integrate nature – grass patches, for instance – in a more effective way. 

To Ms Aminah Abdul Latif, co-founder of Hundred Paths forest school, children benefit immensely from exploring the great outdoors. In forest school, children aged 3½ to 12 are taken to a park – Tampines Eco Green, for instance, or Dairy Farm Nature Park. They put down their bags, walk around, figure out the space, climb and roll down a hill, or play with loose materials. 

“The possibilities are endless for them. We want the children to be able to think about what they can do with the space, to go deeper and take their time, instead of just following what is already set for them,” says the 41-year-old mother of two. Such an environment, she adds, stretches their imagination and improves their posture and focus. 

Ms Lim points out that the National Parks Board has tried to include natural elements in its playgrounds. The nature play area in Pek Kio Park, for one, contains sand, pea gravel, wood and log stumps.

Swan-Li Singapore has manufactured and installed such biophilic playgrounds at locations like Fort Canning Park and Singapore Zoo. And while housing estates seem to be steering clear of such materials for now – mainly due to the maintenance required – it has found other ways to incorporate nature motifs into the heartland.

“To achieve a similar aesthetic without the high maintenance, we use a recycled wood-plastic composite that looks like real timber, but is weather-resistant, easy to maintain and sustainable,” says Swan-Li’s business manager Paul Chua, 38. 

He adds that while modular playgrounds remain common due to their cost efficiency, there has been an uptick in demand for customised and thematic design-and-build playgrounds, like fruit-themed ones in Tengah. 

In some new estates, the generous amount of allocated space also paves the way for the inclusion of diverse structures, such as sky bridges and swings that fit up to six children. 

The size of playgrounds was reduced in the mid-1980s, when HDB decided to spread smaller playgrounds over housing estates to improve access to play areas. These days, however, instead of having reduced play areas dotted around a neighbourhood, Mr Chua observes that such spaces are combined into a larger whole to serve as a social hub where residents can gather. 

“Often, these central spaces feature a ‘wow’ structure that sort of becomes a landmark for the neighbourhood. There’s also been a lot more collaboration between landscape architects and playground designers, so play areas now blend better into the overall landscape design instead of feeling like an add-on,” he notes.

Parents such as Mr Ng and Ms Cheong cheer the new generation of playgrounds. “The playgrounds are different today, which is a good thing,” says Mr Ng. “They are getting creative with all sorts of themes, like insects and animals. The ones from the past have a standardised look, and every playground has almost the same few elements in it.” 

Ms Yi is encouraged by Tengah’s diverse play zones too, and hopes that playground design will continue growing in a more thoughtful direction.

On her wishlist are more open-ended elements; play spaces conceptualised with the involvement of child-development experts such as occupational therapists and physiotherapists; and effective structures closer to the heartland and schools, not just in select areas. 

And she wants to start the conversation now, so that people can push for better design in their neighbourhoods, before Singapore’s memories of lively, boundless play get buried in the sands of time. 

Fun playgrounds with swings in Singapore

North: Nature Playground 

Where: Admiralty Park, 31 Riverside Road 
Open: 24 hours 

This sprawling play area stretches over 7ha and includes 26 slides, as well as a variety of swings. The expression swing in the junior play area, for instance, is combined with a bucket seat so parents can swing with their toddler. There is a swing for wheelchair users too, located at the inclusive-playground section of the park. 

South: Tilting train playground 

Where: Tiong Bahru Park, 1 Henderson Road
Open: 24 hours 

This sand playground is home to a derailed life-size train. Children can climb on board and explore its tilted carriages, before exiting via a slide. There are also several swings and horse-shaped spring riders for those in search of more vigorous action. 

East: Sand quarry playground 

Where: 859D Tampines Walk
Open: 24 hours 

There is no sand at this sand quarry-themed playground in Tampines GreenSpring, but there are plenty of nods to the history of the town which, at its peak, had more than 20 sand quarries. For instance, the sand-mining tower – fitted with an enclosed tube slide – as well as the excavator monkey bars. There are also swings, trampolines and play panels for younger children. 

West: Forest Ramble

Where: Jurong Lake Gardens, 104 Yuan Ching Road
Open: 8am to 10pm, Tuesdays to Sundays 

This 2.3ha nature-inspired playground has 13 adventure stations, all inspired by animals found in Jurong Lake Gardens. Children are encouraged to mimic the movement of these creatures as they play – leaping like squirrels, slithering down the slides like snakes or swinging through the air like the wings of a bird.