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Lately, though, I’ve found myself sitting on a lot of cramped metal benches of the kind that don’t invite you to linger long, or harsh concrete ones that leave you cold. That’s because public seating is becoming an endangered species. If a park bench is not being removed, the backup plan is often to make it uncomfortable. “Hostile architecture” — an urban design strategy intended to impede “antisocial” behavior — is proliferating all over the world. — The New York Times
Cities like San Francisco and Boston have quietly removed seating over the last decade in misguided efforts to curb outdoor sleeping. Interventions like sleep-preventing benches and other forms of cruel deterrents aimed at the homeless population have spilled over into the public sphere. Recently... View full entry
Some of his benches have become part of the fabric of the city — sat on and rained on, captured on Google Street View and even vandalized. Scrawled in tidy handwriting on one bench was, “i love it, thank you,” punctuated by a small heart.
His greatest frustration is that whoever is removing them is leaving bus riders with no place to sit. The benches and their removal get at one of the more byzantine corners of transit bureaucracy in Los Angeles.
— Los Angeles Times
Realizing he had no place to rest at the bus stop near his Eastside home while recovering from a knee injury, this anonymous Los Angeles artist took matters into his own hands and began installing benches at neglected bus stops around the area, Carolina Miranda writes. Unsurprisingly, some of his... View full entry
A pair of USB ports on a console on the front of the bench provides juice from the solar panel mounted at lap level between the seats. Who wouldn’t want to hang out at a bench like this? It certainly catches the eye of passersby. What these kids might not realize, however, is that this bench is watching them back. — Landscape Architecture Magazine
"Smart" benches are spreading—recently a series of them, manufactured by Soofa, was installed in a tiny neighborhood park next to I-77 on the north end of Charlotte, North Carolina with the intent of the neighborhood's analysis and redevelopment. Soofa, founded in 2014 by three graduates of... View full entry
Street furniture is mostly used during the day and not used during the night, except by some homeless, who spend the night on the public benches in parks and on squares. RainCity Housing, a non-profit that provides specialized housing for people living with mental illness and addiction, has launched multi-functional street furniture that can be used as seating during the day and ‘comfortable’ sleeping places for the homeless at night time. — popupcity.net
Previously: Anti-homeless spikes are just the latest in 'defensive urban architecture' View full entry
