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This is not the playground of your childhood. There are none of those old fashioned monkey-bars or lawsuit-ridden see-saws. There's not even a swing at this "Imagination Playground."

But at South Street Seaport in Lower Manhattan, a new $7 million playground that opened Tuesday features a cascading water channel, a climbing rope, masts and pulleys, a lookout ramp with telescopes and "a playground in a box" -- a storage unit with large foam blocks that can be assembled like an erector set.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg was on hand, joined by State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, who suggested that children living nearby should be grateful for the new park.

“I can't help but ask, why couldn't we have a playground like this when I was a kid? This sure beats playing in the street, watching your only baseball roll into the sewer,” Silver says.
 
Designer David Rockwell says that, unlike normal playgrounds, the concept brings new interactivity into the play experience and allows children to constantly re-configure their environment.
 
“Here, kids will have the opportunity to do what they do best, to dream things up, to create them, build them, rip them down and start all over again,” Rockwell says.
 
Because of the moving parts, the new playgrounds will need special staff called "play workers" to maintain and manage the site. Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe put the annual cost at approximately $200,000, but noted that the tab is currently being covered by private donations.

There are more images and videos from the playground's developers here.