Children’s play in natural environments – often referred to as “nature play” – has gained significant attention in recent years. Unlike conventional playgrounds dominated by manufactured equipment, nature play encourages children to interact with natural elements such as logs, rocks, water, plants and loose parts – in both structured and free-form ways.  

Research consistently demonstrates that such engagement supports children’s physical health, emotional resilience, cognitive development and social skills. For example, studies from the Australian Institute of Family Studies highlight reduced stress, improved attention, enhanced creativity and strengthened social connections among children who regularly engage in outdoor play in natural settings. The research bears out a clear link between such play and children’s physical, mental, social and emotional wellbeing. 

In NSW, policymakers and play space designers are increasingly incorporating nature play into urban and suburban environments with the NSW Government’s Everyone Can Play and Place and Play frameworks promoting accessible, inclusive and diverse outdoor play areas.  

However, several issues remain: access and equity, safety and regulation, and consistent implementation. As housing affordability declines and urban density rises, many families – especially those in low-income or high-density developments – face reduced access to safe, high-quality natural play environments. 

What is nature play?

Nature play is not a luxury and is more than recreation. It is foundational to child development. By encouraging exploration, problem-solving and imaginative engagement, it strengthens cognitive, emotional and physical capacities. Outdoor play also mitigates some of the negative effects of urban living, such as high screen time and limited private green space.  

The benefits of nature play are well documented. Spending time in nature or engaging in nature-based play has been shown to improve overall wellbeing by enhancing mood, lowering stress, boosting self-esteem and supporting positive social interactions. It also promotes important skill development, helping children build abilities in risk assessment, problem solving, imagination, physical coordination and resilience.  

In addition, nature play offers practical advantages by using natural materials and local landscapes to make play spaces more accessible and cost-effective by reducing the need for expensive playground equipment and ongoing maintenance.  

The NSW policy landscape

The NSW Government has developed policies to promote nature play. For example, the Everyone Can Play guide provides a best-practice framework for councils, community leaders and designers to create inclusive play spaces. The guide builds on the Place and Play framework and expands its principles through key questions such as: “Can I connect?”, “Can I discover?” and “Can I celebrate?”. These guiding ideas encourage the design of play environments that foster inclusion, creativity and community connection. Importantly, the framework explicitly supports the integration of nature play as part of its broader strategy to make play accessible and meaningful for all children. 

Organisations such as Kidsafe NSW emphasise that outdoor environments in early childhood education and school-age care services must incorporate natural elements and materials in alignment with the National Quality Standard (NQS). This requirement reflects a growing recognition of the developmental and wellbeing benefits of nature play. In addition, professional learning opportunities and training programs are available to support educators in embedding nature play into their daily practice, promoting both safety and creativity in early learning settings.  

Nature play inherently involves elements of risk, such as climbing, balancing or interacting with natural materials. This can create tension between promoting beneficial risk-taking and adhering to safety standards. Kidsafe NSW stresses the importance of ensuring that natural play spaces comply with relevant Australian Standards, including considerations for impact zones, plant safety and surface materials. However, some organisations adopt an overly cautious approach, which may inadvertently reduce the adventurous and exploratory aspects that make nature play valuable. 

Implementation and quality variation

Although the Everyone Can Play guide promotes inclusion, access to nature-rich play spaces remains uneven across different regions and communities. Children living in densely built or lower-income areas often have fewer opportunities to experience high-quality nature play, restricted to small, artificial playgrounds. This is compared with children in newer or more affluent neighbourhoods, who often enjoy landscaped parks and abundant green spaces.  

This spatial inequality reflects broader socioeconomic disparities, as the benefits of nature play are commonly less available to those who might need them most. Moreover, children with disabilities or from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds may face additional barriers to participation, limiting the intended reach of inclusive play initiatives. 

Despite clear guidelines, the consistency of implementation across NSW varies. Some play spaces labelled as “nature play” rely heavily on manufactured equipment rather than authentic natural features such as rocks, logs, vegetation or water. Educators and service providers may also lack the training, confidence or resources to meaningfully embed nature play into programs. Furthermore, the evidence base is still emerging regarding which types of nature play provide the greatest developmental and wellbeing benefits. 

Housing affordability and nature play

Housing affordability shapes not only where children live but also the networks of relations through which they encounter the natural world. In densely built or outer urban areas, affordable housing is often situated in spaces with limited green infrastructure, constraining opportunities for children to engage with the multisensory, non-human elements of nature.  

Rising housing costs and urban densification further reduce private green spaces such as backyards and gardens, meaning that daily encounters with plants, soil, water and other living or non-living natural actors are rare. From a posthumanist perspective, this is not merely a matter of human access. It reflects the diminished agency of natural elements themselves to participate in children’s play and development. Limited interaction with these “non-human actors” (i.e., trees, logs, rocks and open soil), can exacerbate physical, social, and emotional disparities, particularly among children in low-income communities,  

Human beings often see themselves as separate from the natural world, even though we are part of it. Throughout history, people have tried to define humanity as something different from animality, as if being human means rising above nature. But in reality, humanity and nature exist together and depend on each other. 

Posthumanist perspectives challenge the old idea that humans are superior to other species. Instead, they argue that we should recognise our shared existence with the natural world. This way of thinking helps us question how human-centred systems such as urban planning and housing have often cut people off from nature. 

Implementation challenges further shape these entanglements. Children in dense or marginalised communities often experience playgrounds that prioritise manufactured structures over authentic natural elements, restricting their engagement with dynamic, living materials. Variation in quality and educator capacity limits the ways children can interact with these environments, while heightened safety regulations and risk aversion can curtail opportunities for exploratory, multi-species and materially diverse play.  

From a posthumanist viewpoint, these barriers highlight how human-centric policies and urban planning can inadvertently sever the relational potential between children and the non-human world. Instead of separating people from green spaces, we can create affordable housing that includes opportunities for children and families to connect with nature.  

Where NSW should go next

In our view, NSW has the right frameworks in place – but the next phase must emphasise equitable access, quality assurance, educator support and robust evaluation to fully embed nature play. We make the following recommendations to integrate nature play into affordable housing policy: 

1. Inclusivity and cultural responsiveness. Design nature play spaces and programs that reflect the cultural diversity of NSW’s children, including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives on Country, nature and play. Engagement with First Nations communities is essential to make sure the spaces are meaningful, culturally safe and inclusive. 
2. Strategic prioritisation of nature play in underserved areas. Local councils, in partnership with the state government, should map where children lack access to high-quality nature play environments and prioritise funding and development in those areas (e.g., inner suburbs, low socioeconomic zones, communities with limited green space). 
3. Capacity-building for educators and play space designers. Expand training programs (building on existing ones) for early childhood educators, school staff and local government playground planners, focusing on how to implement nature play safely yet meaningfully – and how to integrate it into curricula and community engagement. 
4. Integration into housing and urban design standards. Embed nature play principles into housing and urban planning regulations to ensure that all new affordable housing developments include accessible green and play spaces. Minimum green space ratios and the use of natural materials, vegetation and shared courtyards should be required to promote everyday contact with nature. Integrating these standards into planning and design frameworks will help reduce inequities in access to nature and improve community wellbeing in higher-density and lower-income areas.
5. Standardisation of nature play definition and criteria. To avoid inconsistent implementation, the state should adopt a clear operational definition of nature play (natural elements, loose parts, varied terrain, risk elements, child-led opportunities) and set minimum criteria for accreditation of nature play spaces. At the same time, it will be important to consider how this standardisation can be balanced with local characteristics that reflect and respond to specific ecological contexts. This approach ensures that while consistency and quality are maintained at the state level, individual sites can still express the unique ecological and cultural identities of their local environments.
6. Evaluation and longitudinal research. The state should fund programs that measure outcomes of interventions that are rich in nature play (e.g., in disadvantaged schools) over time, capturing data on wellbeing, physical activity, social interaction, nature-connectedness and educational outcomes. These data will help refine best practices and justify further investment. 

NSW should now focus on operationalising nature play through policies and design processes that are based on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander knowledge and community-based design. Clear standards should be established that maintain consistency across the state, while allowing flexibility for local ecological and cultural identities where all children can connect with and thrive in nature. 

Dr Parisa Ziaesaeidi is an architect with experience in both academia and industry. She is an architecture academic at Western Sydney University. She holds a PhD from the Queensland University of Technology in Australia. Her research interests focus on social sustainability, large and small-scale built environments and neighbourhood design. Parisa’s expertise in this area is reflected in publications in international journals, conferences and architectural magazines, where she has established herself as an architectural journalist. 

Dr Mary Hardie has been a registered architect for more than 40 years since graduating from UNSW in 1979. Following her retirement from practice she has been a registered Architect in the non-practising category since 2023. She has worked in design and construct building companies as well as in architectural design practices. She has a particular interest in sustainable construction and in construction innovation. The implementation of Passive Solar Design principles along with green or vegetated roofs, compressed earth block structures and rainwater storage systems for housing developments have all been areas where she has been actively involved. 

Dr Marissa Lindquist is an Associate Professor of Industrial Design in the School of Engineering, Design and Built Environment at Western Sydney University. She is interested in experimental fabrication and the use of reusable materials, examining how sustainable design practices can enhance both emotional engagement and environmental responsibility in built environments. 

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