When San Diego Children’s Park was first conceived in the 1990s by Peter Walker, FASLA, and Martha Schwartz, FASLA, the two took a decidedly postmodern approach to the design. The area was a blank slate for redevelopment, and the designers were charged with creating a big gesture to connect downtown to the convention center, which was poised to host the 1996 Republican National Convention. 

Children’s Park opened in 1995 with a poetic design that paired primary geometries with playful narrative, featuring the palm-ringed Civic Pond, a grid of circular grassy mounds, and a densely planted forest of Canary Island pine trees.

Perhaps the boldest move was—and still is—the train and trolley lines that seem to float over the pond, part of the Martin Luther King Jr. Promenade designed by Walker and Schwartz a few years earlier. San Diegans love the promenade, but Children’s Park proved less popular over time. A drought led to the decline of the grass on the mounds, which were removed. The grove of Canary Island pines, while an incredible micro-forest in the middle of the city, attracted encampments and unlawful activities. If the park was indeed for children, then it needed to feel safe and accessible.

In 2009, Schmidt Design Group began work on a redesign to better suit neighborhood needs. The team, which included Spurlock Landscape Architects with the Miller Hull Partnership, met with Walker early in the process, but not Schwartz, whose office expressed disappointment in not being asked to participate in the redesign process. “The lack of dialogue reflects a lack of appreciation of creative authorship,” notes Markus Jatsch, principal and creative director at Martha Schwartz Partners. Jatsch says that, in fact, Schwartz’s role in the park’s design had gone largely unrecognized until the Cultural Landscape Foundation included San Diego Children’s Park in its Landslide 2020 program, which focused on women-led work.

At workshops with community members, participants said they wanted, among other things, a better way to engage with the pond. In the redesign, a new boardwalk follows the geometry developed by Walker and Schwartz but allows visitors to stroll out across the pond and sit near the fountain. Other aspects have been lost, however.

At Parks and Rec, our goal is to create more inclusive playgrounds. If you google Children’s Park, you’ll see the classic image of a child running up a mound. Well, that is not inclusive play for some children.

— Kathleen Brand, ASLA

The pattern of mounds and pines is gone to make space for the playground, and much of the urban forest was removed. Kathleen Brand, ASLA, a landscape architect for the City of San Diego, says accessibility was a key consideration. “At Parks and Rec, our goal is to create more inclusive playgrounds. If you google Children’s Park, you’ll see the classic image of a child running up a mound. Well, that is not inclusive play for some children,” she says.

The final design reflects a more traditional and programmed idea of what it means to play—one that reflects the priorities of a community that has grown in the last 30 years—and expanded understanding of accessibility. Yet it also reflects a lack of investment in and care for an iconoclastic work of postmodern design.