"Barriers to free, creative outdoor play across generations inhibit healthy development of the psyche, the body and the mind. Want to counter these consequences? Start early and stay late - transform your family culture, kid's play, and neighborhood play desert into a magical playborhood. Mike Lanza's compelling Playborhood tells you how!"
- Joe Frost, author of A History of Children's Play and Play Environments
"In your hands is a book that is a revelation. It will teach you to see the the true meaning of the neighborhood where you live. Mike Lanza helps you honor your children's wonder of the world around them and inspires you with his strategies, vision, and community love stories."
- Mark Lakeman, founder of the City Repair Project
"When I was young my friends and I played all over our neighborhood. It was our world, and it gave us the security to go out later and explore the wider world around us. Life is different now. You can drive through the safest neighborhoods and they look like ghost towns. Not a single child is outside playing. I am so grateful to Mike Lanza for reminding us that play begins at home and in our neighborhoods. It takes so little to make it happen there - just awareness, passion, and commitment. This book helps to feed all of those."
- Joan Almon, Director, Alliance for Childhood
"In Playborhood, Mike Lanza reminds us that 'Go outside and play!' isn't about driving our kids away, but about enriching their lives. Even better, he lays out a wide range of examples to inspire each of us to create play-friendly spaces in our homes and blocks. Playborhood makes me want to go out and turn my front yard into the funnest place in town for kids to hang out!"
- Ken Denmead, author of the Geek Dad series of books
"At one level Playborhood is a compelling parenting guide. Mike Lanza is one of a growing number of activist parents who want their kids to have a happy childhood, acquire basic life skills, successfully navigate adolescence, and become self-reliant, socially adept, creative, problem-solving adults. In short, he proposes a return to the historic basics of healthy, happy childhoods. The Lanza key to success is for parents to take actions in the 'front space' of homes, streets, and neighborhoods.
On another level, this well-researched, lively, easy-to-read, 'Jane Jacobs primer for kids' presents timely lessons to all those who influence the spatial public realm of neighborhoods - architects, landscape architects, planners, traffic engineers, community developers, neighborhood associations, public officials; and especially developers. Anyone concerned with the lifestyle issues affecting the healthy development of today's children should read the compelling lessons of Playborhood."
- Robin Moore, Professor of Landscape Architecture, North Carolina State University