Since 1994, murakami/Nelson has been assisting the Oakland Unified School District in evaluating their elementary school playgrounds for safety using ASTM and CPSC standards. Working with a coalition of School District and City personnel, community activists, and design professionals, we developed a strategy to replace all deficient play structure matting, remove hazardous equipment and install new equipment to help provide equal play opportunities for Oakland’s school children. The implementation of murakami/Nelson’s design accomplished this transformation at 44 elementary schools and, eventually, 11 middle schools. Additional improvements were made to 26 of the 44 elementary schools. This makes Oakland one of the first cities in the United States to take a proactive, global approach to upgrading school playgrounds to bring them into compliance with current regulations.