Play outside a city's designed play spaces is treated as an act of vandalism. No law bans free play by name, but municipalities use nuisance and public order ordinances to police unsanctioned activity in public space, which is functionally what criminalizes play once it leaves the playground.

I come from a place where the population is counted in tens, where play spaces are ever-changing and constructed by the children themselves. Now, basing myself in Rotterdam, it is not hard to notice that the city imposes rules that limit free play in the name of protecting children from dangers of the city. In a highly populated city, acknowledging the traffic and the way the city moves, it becomes clear that play will be limited by the city's priority: efficiency from point A to point B. The city is built around the working and leisure adult. Nevertheless it has to be acknowledged that people living in dense cities still find many creative ways to play, thanks to communities that introduce it, the biggest example being ASSEMBLE. But in the end, play remains highly limited, both by how cities are designed in blueprint and by how play is shaped in the mental view.  

PlayVandalism is a speculative future in which
play becomes the cornerstone of a city's infrastructure, dissolving the boundary between where the playground ends and the city begins. Every public surface, built and owned by the city, becomes a possible site of play. PlayVandalism argues for corner stone of free play across the citys public infrastructure.