There will be no swings, no roundabouts and definitely no bouncy castle. New playgrounds in Germany are for the over-60s and nobody wants to risk an urgent hip replacement operation.

“It will be a place where the senior generation can find a refuge from younger people,” says Horst Förther, Nuremberg’s sports commissioner. “We were agreed that it was a good idea, given our demographic changes.”

The playgrounds will have large chess boards and a corner to play cards as well as a place to hurl boules. The more ambitious will be able to play badminton on padded surfaces.

The idea was hatched in Finland, where researchers have experimented with what they call “three-generational play”.

The University of Lapland found that a combination of climbing frames, swings and seesaws had significantly helped old people to regain confidence in their bodies. Forty test patients aged between 65 and 81 showed improvements in balance, co-ordination and speed after using a playground for three months.

While the Germans are considering seesaws, they do not want to adopt the Finnish model completely. The Nuremberg plan is to introduce a sense of wellbeing into the lives of the elderly — but not at the expense of their dignity.

No one under the age of 60 will be allowed to enter the fenced-off areas around the centre of Nuremberg. “Retired people need a space to be themselves without someone coming along and spilling ice-cream on their trousers or breakdancing,” said Andrea Weber, a social worker specialising in the lifestyle of the elderly. “They need to feel safe.”

Care of the elderly has become a key political issue in Germany. A low birth rate and increasing proportion of healthy over-70s have created not only a pensions problem but also a number of social dilemmas. Some cities, such as Berlin, have placed retirement homes in the middle of the city — there are eight dotted along Kurfürsten Damm, the equivalent of Bond Street — rather than in the leafy suburbs. “

Boredom is the real enemy of old people,” said Robert Kaspar, a 64-year-old psychotherapist.

Nuremberg, under its young Mayor Ulrich Maly, has a reputation for being ready to innovate in social matters. If the playgrounds for the elderly catch on when they are introduced in the summer, they may serve as a model for Germany.

PENSIONERS AT PLAY

• In Japan the Snuggling Ifbot is a companion robot for the elderly, chatting with its owner about the weather, singing and playing quiz games
  
  
• Since 1976 Maximo Gomez Park in Miami has been a popular meeting place for the elderly, who play chess, draughts and dominoes on specially constructed tables
  
  
• Saga was founded 55 years ago to provide holidays to the over-50s. It offers financial services, a magazine, car hire and a radio station
  
  
• Japan is facing so many problems with elderly criminals that many prisons are being fitted with wheelchair ramps and bathroom handrails

  Source: News agencies

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