Slides actually make a lot of practical sense in urban environments, potentially zooming over busy streets and transferring pedestrians from high ground to low ground faster than an escalator or set of stairs. That is, as long as people use them in an efficient manner and don’t clog them up. A mainstay on playgrounds around the world, slides can add a sense of fun to urban settings for adults, too. These examples of slides integrated into architecture, temporarily installed in city streets and doubling as public sculptures offer some exciting inspiration (take the hint, architects and city planners!)

Skyslide Los Angeles

Zoom from the 70th floor of Los Angeles’ U.S. Bank Tower to the 69th in a fully transparent, 45-foot-long glass slide with thrilling (or terrifying, depending on your feelings about heights) views of the city below. The Skyslide opened this year on the West Coast’s tallest building, and though the glass is only 1 1/4 inches thick, the slide is said to be earthquake- and hurricane-proof.

Giant Water Slide in Bristol by Luke Jerram

‘Park and Slide’ by UK-based artist Luke Jerram temporarily turned Bristol’s Park Street into a waterpark, drawing in 65,000 visitors to watch 360 lucky lottery winners ranging in age from 5 to 73 slide from one end of the street to the next. “This massive urban slide transforms the street and asked people to take a fresh look at the potential of their city and the possibilities for transformation,” says Jerram. “Imagine if there were permanent slides right across cities?”

Transfer Accelerator Slide for Commuters

Designed as part of the Overvecht train station’s redevelopment, the Transfer Accelerator slide in Utrecht makes leaving the train station a little bit faster, and a lot more fun. The slide was integrated into the stairs outside the station as part of a push to encourage more commuters to take the train instead of driving.

Cliveden House Slide

This four-lane stainless steel slide at Cliveden House in Buckinghamshire, former home to Waldorf and Nancy Astoria, distracts visitors from ongoing restoration work and offers an alternative way to get back to lawn level rather than the scaffolding-covered stairs. It’s not often that you see a theme-park-worthy slide attached to a regal old manor house – it’s too bad it’s not a permanent feature.

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12 City Slides Turning Urban Settings Into Playgrounds For Adults

Experience monumental sculpture like you never have before with a new 15-story tunnel slide that spirals around London’s ArcelorMittal Orbit monument, set to be the world’s longest. The UK is really pushing its public art to the next level by adding a record breaker to a record breaker, as the sculpture already holds the title of tallest in the nation. The slide wraps around the sculpture 12 times, and it takes forty seconds to get from the very top to the bottom in a trip through the tube.

Opening to the public on June 24th, 2016, the Carsten Höller-designed slide features both opaque and transparent sections so riders get brief glimpses of the London skyline before plunging back into darkness. A tight corkscrew section snakes its way around the red geometric structure, ending in a straight run to the ground. The slide’s total length is 584 feet.

London erected the strange and rather controversial ArcelorMittal for the 2012 Summer Olympics, offering panoramic views of the city from its location in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. Tickets for the attraction are already on sale for £15 ($22), with a limited number available each day, and you can book more than one ride at a time.

A new amusement offering on the 70th floor of the highest skyscraper on the West Coast is stepping up the game, going beyond glass viewing platforms, swimming pools and bridges to boast a fully-transparent outdoor slide for bold adventurers, all at a lofty 1,000-foot elevation.

Owners of the U.S Bank Tower are adding this extreme sightseeing measure to thrill (or terrify) visitors who wish to simulate the experience of jumping out of a skyscraper. The 36-foot Skyslide will take guests from the 70th down to the 69th floor.

The so-called Skyslide is part of a new observation deck expansion that will charge $25 per ticket, or another $8 to ride the side of the scraper via a trap door.

Attached by minimal metal supports, the clear glass will give stunning views of the surrounding city, at least for those brave enough to keep their eyes open on the way down. Meanwhile, on the East Coast, visitors can experience a similar thrill in slightly less overtly-dangerous environs, touring 50 years of history in 1 WTC elevator ride.

After winding their way up a hundred-foot-tall pathway in the Czech Republic set atop a mountain peak (itself located over 3,000 feet above sea level), visitors are presented with two options: walk all the way back down, or take a ride on the slide that shoots back down through the center of the spiralling walkways on all sides.

Another feature for daredevils comes in the form of netting suspended from a section along the top. Those who wish to can walk and lay on this mesh, experiencing whatever level of terror they can tolerate.

Fránek Architects designed this massive wooden structure, dubbed Sky Walk and aimed at giving viewers a number of twists, turns and chances to find the perfect vista while they work their way up.

“It offers an endless amount of views, situations and moments where an indiscernible human being enters the depth and emerges on the outskirts of this natural structure,” said Fránek.

The pathways are suspended from a central structural core made up of metal-joined wood trusses, forming a space frame that also supports the stainless steel slide more brave guests will opt to take for their return trip.

Located as it is on top of a tall and exposed mountain, the structure is heavily reinforced throughout and tied to concrete footings buried deep in the ground. It also features an emergency spiral staircase down its center. Travelers can get to this wheel-accessible pedestrian viewing spiral via a chairlift at the foot of the mountain, near Dolni Morava.

“I don’t know of any other timber construction with steel elements of a similar size and purpose,” Fránek said. “There are constructions of a similar size but ours takes on an abstract form that suggests the flight of a nocturnal butterfly whose path is seemingly chaotic.”

Weird anthropomorphic, gaudily painted concrete octopus slides lurk within hundreds of Japanese playgrounds, silently traumatizing generations of kids.

These playground octopi climbing frame/slide installations are so common and have been around for so long, it’s really no surprise Japanese parents are nonplussed by their ominous presence – doubtless they played on the very same structures when they were kids.

Visibly showing its age, the pastel pink cephalopod playground set above can be found at Hattori Ryokuchi Park in northern Osaka. It was visited by Akira Nakajima in 2009, David Kawabata (sleepytako) in 2013, and Trout Monroe (troutfactory) on January 1st of 2015.

Two-Toned In Tokyo

Nestled into a small playground in the Kitasenju neighborhood of Tokyo’s crowded Adachi ward, this unusually two-toned octopus slide and the manicured grounds surrounding it are pristine enough to be a zen garden… for kids. One wonders if children are even allowed to climb on it.

Reddy Or Not

Unlike many American playgrounds whose old lawsuit-encouraging equipment continues to be updated in the interest of safety, Japan’s vintage octopus slides are, were and will always be perfectly safe… not to mention easy to maintain. Take the venerable installation above, which needed nothing but a new coat of paint to make it good as new. Once sun-bleached as pink as a beached conch in Flickr user sallyhancox’s 2009 photo, it blazes fire engine red in her image snapped two and a half years later.

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Suckers Japans Ubiquitous Octopus Playground Slides