Of Ping Pong and Play Structures:
An Ethnography of Columbus Park Playground
by Erica Morgan Lee
Tucked between courthouses and tenement-style buildings in Lower Manhattan, Columbus Park provides space for nearby residents to run, dance, play games, and chat with one another. Divided into four distinct sections—an athletic field, playground, basketball court, and pavilion rest area—the block-wide park bridges Chinatown and the municipal buildings, connecting Mulberry Street with Baxter. This ethnography focuses on the playground of Columbus Park and the social behaviors of those using the play structures and ping pong tables–the primary public amenities in the playground. The Columbus Park playground-goers are acutely aware of one another, keeping to the social groups they arrived with, and at times appearing to guard themselves from interaction with outsiders. Overall, observing how individuals acknowledge and ignore one another in Columbus Park offers insight into the relationship between the physical and social structures of cities and how it shapes urban residents’ sense of community or isolation.
Description of fieldsite and fieldwork:
For this project, I focused my participant observation fieldwork on the playground of Columbus Park. I did not speak to park goers, as the older adults spoke Cantonese. Additionally, I felt uncomfortable approaching families as an outsider without a child in a space specifically for children. I made my first visit to Columbus Park on Wednesday, November 22, 2023 from 10:30 AM to 11:30 AM and my second visit on Sunday, November 26, 2023 from 3:30 PM to 4:30 PM. These visits bookended Thanksgiving weekend. Overall, more people were present at Columbus Park playground on November 26 than on November 22, and this could be because New York City public schools were in session on November 22 when I visited the site, but not on the 26th. I completed the bulk of my fieldwork sitting on a bench equidistant from both play structures, pretending to take a call while instead recording a voice memo of my field notes. I also walked around and through the playground. Notably, this playground is where I went to play as a child, from around 2005 to 2012, because I live just three blocks away. While I had not returned in years, I am familiar with the space, and it has a nostalgic quality for me.
The park has two sets of yellow, red, and orange play structures, with a red-painted water play area in the middle and a swing set to the side of one of the play structures (Figures 1-4). All of the equipment and play structures are slightly worn, with the play structures showing evidence of being painted and repainted multiple times with slightly different shades of red (Figure 1). The leafless trees scattered in and around the playground do not provide any shade, nor do they obstruct the view of courthouses and buildings surrounding the park (Figures 1, 2). There are metal ping pong tables near each of the two play structures, which I do not remember from my childhood (Figures 2, 3).
On November 22, there were few people at the playground, but there were two groups of older East Asian adults playing ping pong at each of the two tables—one group of two and one group of four. The groups had both brought their own ping pong equipment, and they spoke Cantonese. Bags hung on the sides of the ping pong table with four people, and jackets and bags were set down on a nearby bench of the ping pong table with two people. A man in the group of four people playing ping pong often jumped up and exclaimed in Cantonese while reaching for the ping pong ball, prompting others in the group to laugh. There was only one East Asian family at the playground—one child and two adults, seemingly a child around three years old, a mother, and a caregiver. The child ran around a play structure while the mother ran parallel to her on the ground, and the caregiver took photos of the two of them. At some points, the mother ran onto the play structure to go down slides with the child. Then, the child wandered over to the group of four playing ping pong, and the group smiled at her before the mother came up and rushed her away while apologizing to the group in English and raising her hand in deference. The group all smiled and laughed in response.
On November 26, there were significantly more people in the park, with groups of 10 and four older adults crowded around each ping pong table, playing ping pong as passionately as the groups on November 22. They were also East Asian, joking loudly in Cantonese, and they kept their possessions near them on benches or the ping pong table. More families were in the park, with some groups on and by the play structures. I noticed one family where the father seemed to be walking parallel to a child of around six running along the play structure, similar to the mother I observed on November 22. This father pushed an empty stroller while keeping his eyes fixed on the child. Across the playground, on the other play structure, a mother performed a similar practice, pushing an empty stroller along as she walked near the play structure and watched her child of around six or seven. On this play structure, another mother went down the slide with her children of about five and seven. Only one parent seemed to be sitting down as he watched two children of about four and six. The park was too crowded, and I was too distant from the children playing to hear what language they were speaking. All the children and parents I observed appeared to be East Asian, like the ping pong players and the group from November 22.
Other observations were recorded, but I did not find them directly relevant to my analysis and argument.
Based on my observations, Columbus Park playground was used as a space for recreation, and the park’s physical play structures and ping pong tables facilitated activity. Despite the coexistence of multiple people in the park, social groups kept to themselves and acted defensively toward one another. The groups demonstrated an awareness of each other, yet they avoided social interaction, regardless of shared park activity, age, language, or ethnicity.
The families at the park displayed careful behavior in the playground, resulting in social isolation between groups who had come to the park together but strengthening cohesion within each group. During my observation, I noticed that many adults closely watched and walked parallel to their children instead of sitting on benches or watching from afar. This could be because these children were young and more likely to pursue risky activities when unsupervised. In addition, the lack of interaction between children struck me as odd. The children I observed seemed to only interact with their parents or with the children they came to the park with, as indicated by how adults would address them together. By exercising an abundance of caution, these parents were habituating their children to only spend time with people they know or to only feel comfortable spending time with these people. Therefore, despite using the same park resources and displaying similar ages and ethnicities, the social interactions between children at the park were limited by social groups established prior to coming to the park.
Observations of the ping pong players demonstrate the self-isolation of groups in public spaces, and this deliberate separation from group outsiders may contribute to reflexive feelings of increased community within each group. For this analysis, I assume that group members knew each other before coming to the park, as the activity required coordinated equipment use. On both November 22 and November 26, the groups closest to a bench placed their belongings on it, while those further away used the tables. The ping pong players were notably older than the families and children using the play structures at the playground. Yet, their coexistence in the space appeared irrelevant, as the two groups did not interact, either due to preference or habituation.
In one instance on November 22, I witnessed the ping pong players interact with a child. The child, likely unaware of the park’s social norms, was ushered away by her mother, who apologized hastily. The players’ kind reactions demonstrated a lack of hostility between the groups but a lack of desire for social interaction beyond their social groups. The mother’s apology implied that these inter-group social interactions are transgressive or abnormal moments worthy of apology and acknowledgment. This moment solidified for me that the Columbus Park playground social groups are socially aware of one another yet actively ignore each other, either intentionally or habitually.
This paper demonstrates how social groups at Columbus Park self-contain themselves, even when coexisting with others who use the same or different physical park structures. This echoes the ideas of Jan Gehl, who wrote that physical space shapes social interactions, and Don Mitchell and Lynn A. Staeheli, who documented and analyzed an example of a government attempting to control the use of physical space by enforcing certain social interactions at a park in San Diego. While these scholars vary in their research methods and takeaways, they raise the same question I explore: What is the relationship between physical space and social interaction in cities? Columbus Park provides an example of the complicated, unspoken understanding that facilitates the negotiation of shared space. Strict social groupings and relationships are upheld despite common use of space, thus creating simultaneous social isolation and connection. In this way, through discussions of ping pong players and playground users, we confront how public urban spaces can simultaneously facilitate social connection and seclusion, laying the groundwork for further research on the social dynamics of urban spaces.