Why cities need more decent seating | Edit ShortsCars

I have not been feeling well since we returned to Toronto on Wednesday, so today’s post will be short and will mostly be archival material.

A recent Globe and Mail editorial reminds us that cities need seating, not just for older people but for everyone:

“There are plenty of reasons why people might want to sit down in the middle of a city. Chatting with a friend, taking a look around, reading a book or maybe just having a rest on a hot summer day. Without good public seating, these options disappear. That turns cities into places merely to move through rather than to stop and enjoy. And in an aging society, cities without places to sit are effectively closed to older pedestrians.”

Cities spend a lot of money on expensive things, but this one is simple and affordable. The Globe notes: “this is not rocket science. Install simple benches in large numbers, more than seem necessary. Put them in places where people will want to sit. And then stop them falling into disrepair.”

The Globe also noted how moveable seating is preferred to the awful, hostile benches we see everywhere. I saw it in Paris years ago and was shocked. People facing each other! Having fun! Drinking a beer with friends in a park! How is this possible?

“Urbanist and social observer William Whyte noticed a half-century ago that people liked the autonomy offered by movable seats. As he wrote in The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces, this sort of seating allowed people to shift into the shade or under the sun, close to a friend or away from the guy with the boom box.”

Another reason we need more public washrooms: Aging baby boomers Lloyd Alter · Jul 8 Read full story

I have long complained that cities need to provide a minimum of services for roughly half of the population who don’t drive and who are usually ignored. The three big ones are:

• Decent, well-maintained sidewalks;

• Clean and safe public washrooms;

• And as the Globe and Mail editors note, a place to sit down.

And those seats don’t have to be hostile and uncomfortable; as the Globe concludes: “Assuming the best of people, rather than the worst, can sometimes pay off.” More, from the archives, on hostile design:

Hostile design doesn’t work for any age group

I have written about this before. From the 2018 MNN archives:

Many people were outraged when they heard about the bird spikes some cities had put in trees to discourage birds from perching there. But in fact, the people versions of bird spikes are far more prevalent — and far more annoying.

This is known as hostile architecture, defined by Cara Chellew as “a type of persuasive design used to guide behavior in urban space by designing out specified uses of street furniture or the built environment as a form of crime prevention or protection of property.” (Chellew is a research administrator for the Global Suburbanisms Project at York University who writes about the politics of public space.)

It’s easy to understand the motivation; there are lots of homeless people looking for a place to lie down. But rather than deal with the issue of homelessness, it’s easier for cities to deal with the symptoms and make it impossible for anyone to lie down.

That means our street furniture is designed for discomfort — for everyone — and that’s a problem. On the one hand, we want people to get out there and move, to get exercise, to get outside. But as we get older, it’s not just nice to be able to sit down; it’s essential.

William H. Whyte wrote in “The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces”:

Ideally, sitting should be physically comfortable — benches with backrests, well-contoured chairs. It’s more important, however, that it be socially comfortable. This means choice: sitting up front, in back, to the side, in the sun, in the shade, in groups, off alone.

You can sit on some of these benches that Chellow shows, but you certainly can’t get comfortable. In fact, that’s the point of the designs.

The designer of the lump of concrete that is the Camden bench, one of the most blatant and offensive bits of hostile architecture, tells CNN that it met a need.

When we designed the Camden bench, we were given an extensive list of requirements, on a fairly small budget. We didn’t have time to address why any of those problems existed. We just came at it from a fairly blunt angle. (The council required that people) couldn’t sleep on it, stash drugs in it, or skate on it. When you level all those things up, it comes out as a pretty defensive piece of furniture, but in fact, all we’re doing is enabling it to be used as a piece of furniture — so people could walk into town and take a rest on it.

Often these things are done because people complain that they don’t have a place to sit, that all the benches are taken up by what they call “rough sleepers” in the U.K. But there are other approaches to take; perhaps more benches, more housing for the homeless, or even a bunch of chairs.

If you go to a park in Paris, you see a different approach. They actually have loose chairs that you can move around and arrange in social groups. Yes, it’s more expensive; they have someone come and lock up the park every night. They also invest a lot of money in social housing so that you don’t see that many homeless people on the street or on the benches. But there are people of all ages and all walks of life, enjoying themselves in the park and sitting in comfortable chairs.

We have noted that 30 minutes of doing just about anything will extend your life, and that exercise keeps your brain young. If we want our aging population to get out there and do it, we need good, safe walking infrastructure, decent public toilets and comfortable places to sit. These hostile designs just get in the way.