> Most of these goals seem noble, but the overall effect is somewhat demoralizing, and follows a potentially dangerous logic with respect to designing for public spaces. When design solutions address the symptoms of a problem (like sleeping outside in public) rather than the cause of the problem (like the myriad societal shortcomings that lead to homelessness), that problem is simply pushed down the street.
Can't agree more. It's so common in France and really depressing. On the linked video (which looks to be shot in Paris, actually), we see dozens of these contraptions right in front of metro ads which cost most than it does to feed and shelter homeless people for several weeks.
Also quite often this design mindset hurts the legit users, too. For instance, lean-on bench costs the same as a normal bench, takes up almost the same space, but doesn't give (valid) users the same benefits. If you are old or obese or have varicose veins, etc. you would certainly prefer to be able to sit down while waiting. Leaning against a wall/bench is just not the same thing. Also if you have a bag you can't put it on the bench or in your lap, you have to keep it on the ground (this one really pisses me off, specially when it rains). If you really go into details and analyse all the angles I'm sure you'd find a dozens more of the little sacrifices that've been made just to keep some people off the benches.
On the other hand, I don't think that it's the park bench designers who should directly address the problems of homelessness.
It's like criticizing people for having locks on their doors. It would be great if people didn't need them. Unfortunately, certain "societal shortcomings" make them a necessary risk-mitigating measure.
I, for one, very much like the design of the Camden bench. It's so less obtrusive and aggressive than e.g. spikes on a storefront. It's much harder to accidentally get hurt by it. These things, which are actually hazardous, not merely preventing unwanted usage, are "unpleasant design" to my eyes.
But isn't this just 'separation of concerns'? I'm not trying to say 'not my problem', but when the shopping centre is built, they're not primarily concerned about finding houses for the homeless - they want to make sure there are seats available for those who want to sit there temporarily.
Lots of public areas, like parks, will be funded by the private sector as a condition of approval for a big apartment building or something - I don't see anything wrong with them spending a minimal amount of effort to prevent 'antisocial behaviour' as well.
It's not any more common in France than it is elsewhere. If you've been to a major North American city, you'll see that the issue is sometimes way worse abroad, where the social net is literally nothing.
You make it sound like the metro in Paris is somewhat extremely homeless-unfriendly, it's not, I take it every single day and most of the seats are normal ones and lots of homeless people sleep and panhandle there in a form of general laissez-faire. I'm not saying France is treating its homeless people well, it's simply not true, but please don't make it look like to the outside world that we're inhumane or particularly harsh in our treatment of the less fortunate.
Simple cost-benefit. If your problem is that homeless people are sleeping in front of your ads and you can
A) shelter some homeless people for several weeks or
B) install spikes and keep every homeless person away (seemingly) forever.
>like the myriad societal shortcomings that lead to homelessness
I think the author has oversimplified many important things related to the problem of homelessness. I want to point of some other aspects of this problem.
Let me explain.
How the homelessness of all the homeless people can be blamed on the societal shortcomings? What about the homeless person's shortcomings?
Blaming everything on society and ignoring the personal shortcomings may gain political advantage but it sets very bad precedences and spoils the entire societal fabric. (The Marxists/socialists always use this as a tactic to sway public mood and that is more harmful for the free and humane society.)
e.g. I may be homeless because I sold my house and spent all the money on drugs or in the casinos or on watching movies or on prostitutes or on the internet or on something else to derive various types of carnal/non-carnal pleasures. In this way, not only I became homeless but I made my entire family of 4 children and a wife homeless.
This is just one example. The other major reason is immigration of huge number of people who are unskilled and/or are unwilling to work and migrate to cities which are more popular and hence are more costly and thus find themselves homeless.
How exactly can such homelessness be blamed on the society? In the first example, the person, who enjoyed the freedom of choice, must face the consequences of his/her actions.
In the other case: it is EU leaders' foolish (almost suicidal) decision to allow unchecked immigration to flood the European cities and make the life of the people already living there a hell. One of the very important reasons for Brexit is related to immigration, especially the immigration of people unwilling to integrate: i.e. people from Islamic countries.
I don't deny that there are some people (especially children) who are homeless not because of their own but because of someone else's actions. Let's agree, for the sake of argument, that a more humane society must take responsibility of such homeless people.
But even then, even if the homelessness of such people is partly due to some societal shortcomings, why the rest of people should suffer to provide space (e.g. public benches) for the homeless ones to sleep on?
> The Camden Bench is virtually impossible to sleep on. It is anti-dealer and anti-litter because it features no slots or crevices in which to stash drugs or into which trash could slip. It is anti-theft because the recesses near the ground allow people to store bags behind their legs and away from would be criminals. It is anti-skateboard because the edges on the bench fluctuate in height to make grinding difficult. It is anti-graffiti because it has a special coating to repel paint.
It's a bench for sitting on, I don't understand how anyone gave this a second thought.
And are they treating the anti-skate/anti-graffiti as negatives? Why would the city not want to protect their property and make keep the tear to a minimum.
Consider it this way. The Camden Bench has a clear dictum - thou shalt only sit. It's pretty clear that this object has been placed by a rigid authority with strong opinions on the right and wrong way to use their bench.
A "standard" bench is more neutral - here is a bench. Do with it what you like. The user is invited to exercise their own preferences in how to use it. It acknowledges that the user may have their own valid ideas about how to use it. Consequently, the user feels more respected.
It's like using a locked-down phone vs one where the user is free to install their own firmware. The former may be adequate for many and more straightforward to use, but it may not serve all users and many would bristle just at the suggestion that they are being limited in what they can do.
This isn't necessarily bad, and there are plenty of innocuous unpleasant designs: doors with locks, fences, car alarms, even those faucets in airport bathrooms you have to keep pushing to keep them from turning off. Sometimes you need to make something less friendly in order to prevent certain unwanted uses.
The important thing to remember is that you aren't fooling anyone. It's quite clear what your unpleasant design is designed to prevent, and the design itself serves as a constant reminder of the problem it was designed to solve. Locks remind you of burglary, airport bathroom faucets remind you that people often leave the water running, and spiky windowsills remind you of homelessness almost as much as actual homeless people do. This may not be the kind of feeling you want to build into your city!
These kinds of designs and your point remind me of MIT's decision to install heavy-gauge "security" screens on all upper-story windows of my dormitory, in response to an incident where an underclassman ended his life by deliberately exiting one.
They were godawful ugly, but worse, a constant reminder that we nominal adults (and supposedly quite bright, promising ones at that) simply weren't to be trusted not to do ourselves great harm at any moment. Certainly you could argue they served a useful purpose, but I always thought they were deeply dehumanizing.
> This isn't necessarily bad, and there are plenty of innocuous unpleasant designs: doors with locks, fences, car alarms, even those faucets in airport bathrooms you have to keep pushing to keep them from turning off. Sometimes you need to make something less friendly in order to prevent certain unwanted uses.
I think the key difference here is that these things prevent burglary, trespassing, grand theft, and thousands of gallons of wasted water. The Camden bench just makes it so you don't have to see a homeless person. There's something distinctly dehumanizing about that, moreso than door locks.
> The important thing to remember is that you aren't fooling anyone. It's quite clear what your unpleasant design is designed to prevent, and the design itself serves as a constant reminder of the problem it was designed to solve.
Is that really true though? Things like spikes are clearly hostile add-ons; there is no reason for their existence other than preventing some behaviour, so nobody is fooled.
However, something like an arm rest on a bench may appear completely innocuous to the majority of people. The same goes for pink or blue lighting, and some of the "features" of the Camden Bench (e.g. no nooks to stash drugs) would probably go unnoticed if they weren't explicitly stated.
I suppose it's like having the mindset of a security researcher (e.g. https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/02/smart_water.h... ); unless you're engaged in them yourself, it takes a certain kind of mind to figure out what behaviours would be possible if it weren't for these contrivances.
I'm not sure that's "unpleasant design" so much as outright bad design. Aluminum is cheap and easy to extrude into rectangular tubes suitable for use as bench slats. Unfortunately aluminum is a pretty terrible material for this use. It's freezing cold in the winter, as you noted. It can also be hot enough to burn in the summer sun. And it's hard. And it's ugly (when used this way). I don't think any of this is intended to deter people from sleeping on it. It's just a cheap way to install a bench.
* "Unpleasant design" is different because it aims to exert social control in public spaces
* "Unpleasant design" is different because it is intended to create a hostile atmosphere - it increases unpleasantness rather than pleasantness
I don't really agree with either claim.
All design of public spaces is intended to exert some form of social control. Creating a manicured park with flower beds, comfortable benches and beautiful splashing fountains is intended to exert social control by encouraging people to congregate and spend time in the park. In fact, any good designer attempts to exert control by encouraging certain behaviour patterns over other behaviour patterns.
"Unpleasant design" is not intended to increase unpleasantness. Some groups perceive people sleeping on benches or congregating ("loitering") as unpleasant, just as other groups find preventing people from sleeping on benches or congregating to be unpleasant.
I'm not defending the particular examples of design referenced in the article. I'm not saying it's a great idea to make benches you can't lie down on. But I don't agree it makes sense as a distinct category of design. It's just design that tends to favour groups higher in the socio-economic hierarchy at the expense of groups lower in the socio-economic hierarchy. This may be a very bad thing, but I don't think it's a different type of design.
For some reason whenever I see articles like this on design, I think of conway's law. See, broadly, design is a process of questioning and understanding. This process is limited by and maybe starts to metaphorically resemble the structure of the organisation which produces it.
This is for some reason much more apparent where there is a social/political aspect to the design, rather than being purely commercial. Maybe a better design for a toilet to prevent injecting.. is a safe injecting room. ie. The problem as identified by the client is not 'people shooting up unsafely', the problem is 'our voters don't like these people hanging around'. The blue light somehow exposes the cold blooded rationalism of a council wishing to satisfy its benefactors at the expense of its inhabitants.In fact, it is just as important that it also illustrates this point, as it is as much about symbolism as utility.
So I guess while I agree with you, I still think it is worth drawing attention to the unpleasant designs for unpleasant clients..
I guess what you are arguing is that the design is in many ways apathetic to pleasantness, and simply a utility to exert change in behaviour.
I agree, but I also feel like making that distinction aligns really well with the idea that they are dehumanizing.
The contraptions themselves are definitely designed to be unpleasant though. But the design choice to add them to the space is a more complicated discussion.
Right. The article has a point, but trying to extend it into a full category of design—and then calling it "unpleasant design"—feels more than a bit arbitrary. They just grouped together designs with goals they disliked and called them "unpleasant" under the guise of developing a "critical theory". When you define a category, with a name, you're heavily implying that the categorization you use is important and meaningful and natural, and it's not clear that it is here.
They're trying to sneak a particular moral point through as commentary on design—which, thinking about it, isn't all that different from the designs they criticize.
I'm not sure it's that important, but I would say there's a difference between preventing people from doing what they want and inviting people do to something. That said, I'm also not sure the article actually claims that difference.
> Whether handed down by the establishment or created in response to official interventions, there is always an aspect of coercion to design. Usability design, for instance, is used to get people to buy things and use their smartphones in certain ways, often without the user even being aware of it. Fundamentally, works of unpleasant design, hostile architecture and street furniture in general are no different.
These prevent birds from sitting on these displays, which keeps the displays clean and prevents passengers waiting below that display from unpleasant surprises.
The “leaning benches” remind me of the mercy seats found in late medieval churches. Old or infirm monks and other clergy could use them for support during long prayers for which standing was obligatory.
To me, "buzzers for teenagers" is an extremelly unsettling slash dehumanizing idea. I thought it's a proof of concept, I can't imagine how anybody will actually install one of these.
It's totally like installing a bump in your door frame so any people with disability will have difficulty passing. We're not wanting any limp lamers to destroy our healthy mood inside, do we?
One day people who embraced this kind of thing will be old and helpless, and "teenagers" will held all posts. Just sayin'.
I was in New York recently and the Franklin Av Shuttle subway station seemed to have these devices throughout the station (entry hall, stairs and platform were all covered). Also in my 20s and I could hear them clearly - the frequency was changing between several very annoying ones, all in the extremely high pitched spectrum (17.5-20kHz, from what I read online). By the time the train arrived I was really glad to get out of there, it made my head hurt quite a bit. It was an awful experience. Apparently the MTA decided that royally annoying young customers was less important than preventing loitering kids.
I really hate all of the effort taken to prevent people from sleeping (or generally relaxing) on the street in San Francisco. I have on many occasions picked up a sandwich and then walked a mile without finding a good place to sit and eat it. All because we're worried some homeless person might be too comfortable.
The problem is not that homeless people want to sleep on benches, the problem is that we've failed so badly at taking care of each other that people have nowhere else to sleep.
A friend had a shoe store downtown and one of the most unpleasants things about it was that every night someone would piss in the front gate/door. How do you deter that?
He closed the business (not only for that reason, of course) and has a store in the mall now.
Install a camera if allowed. If the mere threat of being caught on film was not enough then find out when this would typically happen in the night and hire a couple of security guards for a night or two.
See how the lady walks on the right? Bicycles stay on the two rails on the left and often pedestrians too. All the space in the middle is nobody's land. It's rounded pebbles in a concrete pavement.
You see this a lot of airports. One particularly egregious example is EasyJet's 'boarding lounge' (which you are funneled into long before a plane even arrives), which has a few leaning benches but is otherwise standing room only. This isn't for any public good - it is meant to push you into paying for 'speedy boarding', which gets you access to a roped off area with proper seats.
It seems like this is the real world equivalent of the design that has to go into social software.
It's a universal rule of the public Internet that spam and abuse make everything suck. Therefore it's not enough that your design encourages good usage. It also has to discourage bad usage.
Generally I avoid the homeless. I don't give them money and I frown on their activities. However, they are humans, and they deserve to be treated with respect. It warmed my hearts when the anarchists in London used cement to cover up the spikes at a Tesco. I'm not advocating destruction of property, or the breakage of any laws, but I do think we all need to change our views on the homeless. They're people. Treat them with respect, even if you disagree with their way of life.
I'm convinced that someone(s) in Santa Monica, CA's urban planning divsion has been practicing unpleasant design ruthlessly.
The first pass replaced normal bus bench seating with low blue toadstools. Once they figured out that they're terrible for people with any kind of knee problem
or more serious disability, they added a pair of poles to the sides. Useless,
uncomfortable seats, but by God, no homeless people (or regular people) can enjo
y their use.
More recently, at a rail station they added a wavy pattern to the sidewalks[1]. I heard second-hand that the texture causes disorientation and nausea, and then I experienced it myself. Now I'm convinced that it's to keep bicyclists off the sidewalk, because it makes anyone sick to look at it, but bicyclists are slightly faster and usually have to look where they're going more carefully than pedestrians.
Good lord that sidewalk is horrible when looked at from eye height. Does it give the same impression of lumpy/wavy when you're crossing it rather than walking along it?
I would love to see fewer street lights. Especially in village / suburban settings. But the word is that they reduce crime. Are there any studies to this effect?
[+] [-] scrollaway|9 years ago|reply
> Most of these goals seem noble, but the overall effect is somewhat demoralizing, and follows a potentially dangerous logic with respect to designing for public spaces. When design solutions address the symptoms of a problem (like sleeping outside in public) rather than the cause of the problem (like the myriad societal shortcomings that lead to homelessness), that problem is simply pushed down the street.
Can't agree more. It's so common in France and really depressing. On the linked video (which looks to be shot in Paris, actually), we see dozens of these contraptions right in front of metro ads which cost most than it does to feed and shelter homeless people for several weeks.
[+] [-] ivanhoe|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nine_k|9 years ago|reply
It's like criticizing people for having locks on their doors. It would be great if people didn't need them. Unfortunately, certain "societal shortcomings" make them a necessary risk-mitigating measure.
I, for one, very much like the design of the Camden bench. It's so less obtrusive and aggressive than e.g. spikes on a storefront. It's much harder to accidentally get hurt by it. These things, which are actually hazardous, not merely preventing unwanted usage, are "unpleasant design" to my eyes.
[+] [-] madeofpalk|9 years ago|reply
Lots of public areas, like parks, will be funded by the private sector as a condition of approval for a big apartment building or something - I don't see anything wrong with them spending a minimal amount of effort to prevent 'antisocial behaviour' as well.
[+] [-] VeejayRampay|9 years ago|reply
It's not any more common in France than it is elsewhere. If you've been to a major North American city, you'll see that the issue is sometimes way worse abroad, where the social net is literally nothing.
You make it sound like the metro in Paris is somewhat extremely homeless-unfriendly, it's not, I take it every single day and most of the seats are normal ones and lots of homeless people sleep and panhandle there in a form of general laissez-faire. I'm not saying France is treating its homeless people well, it's simply not true, but please don't make it look like to the outside world that we're inhumane or particularly harsh in our treatment of the less fortunate.
[+] [-] 746F7475|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tmptmp|9 years ago|reply
I think the author has oversimplified many important things related to the problem of homelessness. I want to point of some other aspects of this problem.
Let me explain.
How the homelessness of all the homeless people can be blamed on the societal shortcomings? What about the homeless person's shortcomings?
Blaming everything on society and ignoring the personal shortcomings may gain political advantage but it sets very bad precedences and spoils the entire societal fabric. (The Marxists/socialists always use this as a tactic to sway public mood and that is more harmful for the free and humane society.)
e.g. I may be homeless because I sold my house and spent all the money on drugs or in the casinos or on watching movies or on prostitutes or on the internet or on something else to derive various types of carnal/non-carnal pleasures. In this way, not only I became homeless but I made my entire family of 4 children and a wife homeless.
This is just one example. The other major reason is immigration of huge number of people who are unskilled and/or are unwilling to work and migrate to cities which are more popular and hence are more costly and thus find themselves homeless.
How exactly can such homelessness be blamed on the society? In the first example, the person, who enjoyed the freedom of choice, must face the consequences of his/her actions.
In the other case: it is EU leaders' foolish (almost suicidal) decision to allow unchecked immigration to flood the European cities and make the life of the people already living there a hell. One of the very important reasons for Brexit is related to immigration, especially the immigration of people unwilling to integrate: i.e. people from Islamic countries.
I don't deny that there are some people (especially children) who are homeless not because of their own but because of someone else's actions. Let's agree, for the sake of argument, that a more humane society must take responsibility of such homeless people.
But even then, even if the homelessness of such people is partly due to some societal shortcomings, why the rest of people should suffer to provide space (e.g. public benches) for the homeless ones to sleep on?
[+] [-] wingerlang|9 years ago|reply
It's a bench for sitting on, I don't understand how anyone gave this a second thought.
And are they treating the anti-skate/anti-graffiti as negatives? Why would the city not want to protect their property and make keep the tear to a minimum.
[+] [-] pimlottc|9 years ago|reply
A "standard" bench is more neutral - here is a bench. Do with it what you like. The user is invited to exercise their own preferences in how to use it. It acknowledges that the user may have their own valid ideas about how to use it. Consequently, the user feels more respected.
It's like using a locked-down phone vs one where the user is free to install their own firmware. The former may be adequate for many and more straightforward to use, but it may not serve all users and many would bristle just at the suggestion that they are being limited in what they can do.
[+] [-] panic|9 years ago|reply
The important thing to remember is that you aren't fooling anyone. It's quite clear what your unpleasant design is designed to prevent, and the design itself serves as a constant reminder of the problem it was designed to solve. Locks remind you of burglary, airport bathroom faucets remind you that people often leave the water running, and spiky windowsills remind you of homelessness almost as much as actual homeless people do. This may not be the kind of feeling you want to build into your city!
[+] [-] twoodfin|9 years ago|reply
They were godawful ugly, but worse, a constant reminder that we nominal adults (and supposedly quite bright, promising ones at that) simply weren't to be trusted not to do ourselves great harm at any moment. Certainly you could argue they served a useful purpose, but I always thought they were deeply dehumanizing.
[+] [-] chjohasbrouck|9 years ago|reply
I think the key difference here is that these things prevent burglary, trespassing, grand theft, and thousands of gallons of wasted water. The Camden bench just makes it so you don't have to see a homeless person. There's something distinctly dehumanizing about that, moreso than door locks.
[+] [-] chriswarbo|9 years ago|reply
Is that really true though? Things like spikes are clearly hostile add-ons; there is no reason for their existence other than preventing some behaviour, so nobody is fooled.
However, something like an arm rest on a bench may appear completely innocuous to the majority of people. The same goes for pink or blue lighting, and some of the "features" of the Camden Bench (e.g. no nooks to stash drugs) would probably go unnoticed if they weren't explicitly stated.
I suppose it's like having the mindset of a security researcher (e.g. https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/02/smart_water.h... ); unless you're engaged in them yourself, it takes a certain kind of mind to figure out what behaviours would be possible if it weren't for these contrivances.
[+] [-] geon|9 years ago|reply
They have them at the Copenhagen airport.
[+] [-] dpark|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gabemart|9 years ago|reply
* "Unpleasant design" is different because it aims to exert social control in public spaces
* "Unpleasant design" is different because it is intended to create a hostile atmosphere - it increases unpleasantness rather than pleasantness
I don't really agree with either claim.
All design of public spaces is intended to exert some form of social control. Creating a manicured park with flower beds, comfortable benches and beautiful splashing fountains is intended to exert social control by encouraging people to congregate and spend time in the park. In fact, any good designer attempts to exert control by encouraging certain behaviour patterns over other behaviour patterns.
"Unpleasant design" is not intended to increase unpleasantness. Some groups perceive people sleeping on benches or congregating ("loitering") as unpleasant, just as other groups find preventing people from sleeping on benches or congregating to be unpleasant.
I'm not defending the particular examples of design referenced in the article. I'm not saying it's a great idea to make benches you can't lie down on. But I don't agree it makes sense as a distinct category of design. It's just design that tends to favour groups higher in the socio-economic hierarchy at the expense of groups lower in the socio-economic hierarchy. This may be a very bad thing, but I don't think it's a different type of design.
[+] [-] cam_l|9 years ago|reply
For some reason whenever I see articles like this on design, I think of conway's law. See, broadly, design is a process of questioning and understanding. This process is limited by and maybe starts to metaphorically resemble the structure of the organisation which produces it.
This is for some reason much more apparent where there is a social/political aspect to the design, rather than being purely commercial. Maybe a better design for a toilet to prevent injecting.. is a safe injecting room. ie. The problem as identified by the client is not 'people shooting up unsafely', the problem is 'our voters don't like these people hanging around'. The blue light somehow exposes the cold blooded rationalism of a council wishing to satisfy its benefactors at the expense of its inhabitants.In fact, it is just as important that it also illustrates this point, as it is as much about symbolism as utility.
So I guess while I agree with you, I still think it is worth drawing attention to the unpleasant designs for unpleasant clients..
[+] [-] ehnto|9 years ago|reply
I agree, but I also feel like making that distinction aligns really well with the idea that they are dehumanizing.
The contraptions themselves are definitely designed to be unpleasant though. But the design choice to add them to the space is a more complicated discussion.
[+] [-] tikhonj|9 years ago|reply
They're trying to sneak a particular moral point through as commentary on design—which, thinking about it, isn't all that different from the designs they criticize.
[+] [-] uola|9 years ago|reply
> Whether handed down by the establishment or created in response to official interventions, there is always an aspect of coercion to design. Usability design, for instance, is used to get people to buy things and use their smartphones in certain ways, often without the user even being aware of it. Fundamentally, works of unpleasant design, hostile architecture and street furniture in general are no different.
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] ozmbie|9 years ago|reply
These are a physical equivalent of Dark Patterns (user interfaces designed to trick people).
[+] [-] vog|9 years ago|reply
For example, on top of the information displays at outdoor stations, there are spikes, as seen on this picture:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6d/IMG_6146...
These prevent birds from sitting on these displays, which keeps the displays clean and prevents passengers waiting below that display from unpleasant surprises.
[+] [-] rangibaby|9 years ago|reply
Queues at Disneyland etc. follow these principles too, to stop you from getting stressed by a long wait.
[+] [-] Anthony-G|9 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misericord
[+] [-] timlyo|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] guard-of-terra|9 years ago|reply
It's totally like installing a bump in your door frame so any people with disability will have difficulty passing. We're not wanting any limp lamers to destroy our healthy mood inside, do we?
One day people who embraced this kind of thing will be old and helpless, and "teenagers" will held all posts. Just sayin'.
[+] [-] lorenzhs|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cowpewter|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] habosa|9 years ago|reply
The problem is not that homeless people want to sleep on benches, the problem is that we've failed so badly at taking care of each other that people have nowhere else to sleep.
[+] [-] swah|9 years ago|reply
He closed the business (not only for that reason, of course) and has a store in the mall now.
[+] [-] reitanqild|9 years ago|reply
Not sure if it would work but not impossible.
[+] [-] chriswarbo|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dsr_|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pmontra|9 years ago|reply
http://i.imgur.com/FUuFPgK.jpg
See how the lady walks on the right? Bicycles stay on the two rails on the left and often pedestrians too. All the space in the middle is nobody's land. It's rounded pebbles in a concrete pavement.
[+] [-] feintruled|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] skybrian|9 years ago|reply
It's a universal rule of the public Internet that spam and abuse make everything suck. Therefore it's not enough that your design encourages good usage. It also has to discourage bad usage.
[+] [-] Overtonwindow|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ipsin|9 years ago|reply
The first pass replaced normal bus bench seating with low blue toadstools. Once they figured out that they're terrible for people with any kind of knee problem or more serious disability, they added a pair of poles to the sides. Useless, uncomfortable seats, but by God, no homeless people (or regular people) can enjo y their use.
More recently, at a rail station they added a wavy pattern to the sidewalks[1]. I heard second-hand that the texture causes disorientation and nausea, and then I experienced it myself. Now I'm convinced that it's to keep bicyclists off the sidewalk, because it makes anyone sick to look at it, but bicyclists are slightly faster and usually have to look where they're going more carefully than pedestrians.
[1] http://ronslog.typepad.com/ronslog/2016/06/santa-monica-phot... , particularly the sixth photo. Not mine, but the best shots I've seen of it.
[+] [-] fencepost|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] smonff|9 years ago|reply
- http://www.the-wabsite.com/works/relaxation-situationnelle
- http://www.the-wabsite.com/works/paris-a-place-to-stay
- http://www.the-wabsite.com/works/skate-anti-skate
[+] [-] ctack|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] icebraining|9 years ago|reply
http://www.popcenter.org/library/crimeprevention/volume_10/0...
http://jech.bmj.com/content/early/2015/07/08/jech-2015-20601...
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] ekingr|9 years ago|reply