What this article makes very clear is the potential that urban areas and cities such as New York City have with regards to incorporating environmentally friendly infrastructure. With the amount of large buildings and public spaces in a city like hours, it would clearly beneficial in the long terms to utilize new technologies to deal with the current environmental problems that the city faces. What is interesting about this new playground is the way that it uses environmental planning in a way that also involves children in the process. Specifically in this case, children were allowed choose what type of things were in there new playground, such as trees and grass.
This is particularly important because not only does these conversation efforts help deal with sewage and waste water, more importantly, it serves as an educational opportunity for children with regards to environmental issues. While this is just conjecture, one can assume that children that benefit from environmental urban planning when they are young are more likely to look at green movements in a positive light.
However, while individual green efforts like this are beneficial even in the smallest amount, the biggest issue with green infrastructure in urban areas at the problem is the movement towards aesthetics rather than pragmatism. There are plenty of types of green infrastructure that have definite benefits for the environment or for people, but are less accepted by the populace because those benefits are not apparent simply by appearance. Something like this playground shows clear benefits in clearing out storm water but other types of green solutions have less solutions and as a result, might not be accepted by the people from the get-go.
