The Camden bench evolved from designs developed for Camden Borough Council. It is designed with today’s street seating needs in mind, such as resisting criminal and anti-social behaviour:
• Deters rough sleeping – ridged top and sloped surfaces make it difficult to lie on.
• Deters drug dealing – no crevices in which to hide such materials.
• Deters bag theft – recesses along the bench’s front and back allow people to store bags behind their legs out of harm’s way.
• Reduces littering – there are no flat surfaces or crevices where litter usually accumulates. Dirt and water flow off.
• Easy to relocate (for example, to move it away from a problem area) – there’s no need to bolt the bench to a foundation and built-in lifting eyes allow the bench to be moved easily by truck crane.Click HERE for more facts
I love how laying down is considered “criminal and anti-social behavior”
for real the criminalization of poverty is one of the worst ways capitalism works
somebody fly me to Camden and give me a fucking sledgehammer
… deters sitting on by people who need stability or support…
That is some ableist design in addition to being super classist…
Hostile design is ableist by nature. A recent design trend, for example, involves taking all sitting areas out of bus stops and replacing them worth “leaning supports” that force people to stand. These are wide hand rail type structures at about hip height on a standing adult.
Aside from the obvious ableist and classist problems, they are also hell for children and their guardians,since children’s short stature makes the rails useless, and because children desperately need rest spaces to accommodate their more delicate health and wellness.
Hostile public design is shit, and it needs to be shot, possibly along with the people who enforce it instead of actually solving the problems they want to “fix”.