In my neighborhood parks , with very few exceptions all that kids are offered is active play equipment .  The problem this causes if you want to the  other type of play our neighborhood parks do not offer equipment for these. In the Science of Play, Susan Solomon said...


More and more, preteens avoid the playground altogether, choosing instead to spend time indoors, most likely sitting in front of some kind of screen

 I think in NYC our parks are acting like specialty retailers... for kids they specialize in "selling" active play, for adults what they 'sell" is passive recreation bench seating .For the most part the offerings in these  neighborhood park "specialty stores" are pretty slim.  If a specialty retailer doesn't sell the type of goods you're interested in you have no reason to go into that store, you will take your business elsewhere-- and  buy from a store that has the goods you do want. 

So how to  attract more people to your store. Well if instead of a store that offered few  items (passive seating for adults, active play for kids) , you had a store  selling a wide range  of merchandise I would think that would attract more people.