‘Great cities invest in their children’: Philadelphia designated world’s first Playful Learning City

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Philadelphia has been declared the world’s first “Playful Learning City.”

The designation comes from Playful Learning Landscapes, a Philly-based nonprofit that designs and installs low-impact play stations in high-traffic areas, like laundromats and bus stations.

At the opening of the latest installation in Sister Cities Park on Benjamin Franklin Parkway, Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker said cities must have places where children feel free to act like children.

“Great cities, truly great cities, invest in their children,” she said.

Philadelphia has served as the proving ground for Playful Learning Landscapes, which was founded in 2009 by two child psychologists, Kathy Hirsh-Pasek and Roberta Michnick Golinkoff. Since then, the concept has spread to several cities around the world.

The idea is to design creative prompts in unusual, everyday places, giving the impression that opportunities for play are everywhere. On a light pole in Love Park, a wheel prompts children to describe a favorite teacher, singer or astronaut. A sign at Sister Cities Park tells kids to twist their bodies like a toy Slinky.

“These are not destinations. We’re not asking kids and families to go to a particular place to engage with this,” Playful Learning Landscapes Executive Director Sarah Lytle said. “They’re really integrated into their daily routine.”

Lytle said most Playful Learning installations have been in Philadelphia’s outer neighborhoods. But for America’s semiquincentennial summer of 2026, the organization pushed to get 11 Playful Learning installations in the center of the city, from Eakins Oval to Elfreth’s Alley.

“We had not historically done any work in Center City,” Lytle said. “But given all of that traffic that we anticipate this summer for the [nation’s] 250, for the World Cup, all of that, we wanted to bring Playful Learning into Center City.”

The Sister Cities Café is the “launching pad” of the downtown installations, with a sampling of Philadelphia’s firsts: Signs highlighting Philadelphia firsts, like the nation’s first public library, first movie screening and America’s first circus are posted on a curved tunnel of squared arches that represent the movement of a revolving door, also a Philly first.

The new Playful Learning installations are placed at 2200 Pennsylvania Ave. near Eakins Oval, as well as outside the Rodin Museum, the Franklin Institute, Shakespeare Park near the central branch of the Free Library, Sister Cities Park, Love Park, Dilworth Plaza and Reading Terminal Market. Three more are forthcoming at Franklin Square, the National Constitution Center and Elfreth’s Alley.