The park in my parent's neighborhood got rid of all the benches
The park in my parent's neighborhood got rid of all the benches
172 comments
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Rather than just help them (which is cheaper btw) they take services away from everyone in an attempt to make their area shitty enough they'll go somewhere else...
Completely ignoring that they're making it shitty for the people they want to keep too, which makes people want to leave and depressed selling prices, which can easily lead to a panic and flight from an area destroying the community.
Even from a purely selfish capitalistic perspective, it's best to just have a fucking safety net. Beyond all the ethical reasons we should, there's not a single logical reason not to fucking help people.
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The problem is that businesses see it as a way to drive customers into their stores where they can then demand they either buy something or leave. This is end stage capitalism bullshit where they're trying to wring blood from a stone.
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But have you considered that maybe my good and just God has given me a mission to make everyone else suffer?
I'm sure it's written somewhere in the bible. Idk I've never read it.
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Neither have most Christians.
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Yeah, but Republican voters want to hurt people who aren't like them. How will your proposal help them do that??
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No? Have a safety net? The more that die, the more theoretical wealth becomes available to them. Even if it's homeless.
It reaches the same goal for them. That's why it's selfish and capitalistic, it works. It just sacrifices everything that isn't I. It's that doomer mentality, of why bother helping. world's dog shit, so be dog shit.
Live your life one of two ways, how the world wants or how you want the world to be.
I want this world to be better, so I do what I can to make it how I wish it was. Trying to quit a weed addiction, so I do small shit like not litter butts, or pick up garbage I think might be cool, help animals in danger, do something when you can.
Just talk. Capitalists however profit from any social benefits because they're pathetic cowards that need daddy's wallets until they're decrepit middle age men.
Ps. This is just something that makes me feel special and I don't have many friends. The other day on the train an old black guy and an old white guy were talking about how the world is ass. There hasn't been a good president since George Washington, not the time to enlist cause what are we fighting for. I was tired, but eventually asked why is now the wrong time if tomorrow is worse. There's never a good time, because you aren't trying. Anyways, an EVEN older black man standing next to me says, something about back in his day even hoodrats tried to help. Everyone was quite.
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The problem is that when you do help people, more people keep showing up who want help too. There's a good reason why a couple hundred thousand migrants have come to NYC (where I live) and that isn't because there's no "fucking safety net". Frankly, I want less of a safety net here so that these people leave and the rest of the country has to do its share. I feel absolutely no guilt saying that I want either those benches a person can't lie down on or no benches at all in the public areas I go to.
There are help-the-homeless-even-more advocates in NYC so I'm not saying everyone is a hypocrite, but I expect that the overlap between "complains about measures to deter homeless people" and "lives in a neighborhood with a lot of homeless people" is small.
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The problem is that when you do help people, more people keep showing up who want help too.
Which is why if it happens on a federal level, then people don't congregate in the few places that aren't as worse as possible.
If we handle it on a city or even state level, then people spit out by the worst states will always migrate, subsidizing the cost of the policies for those shitty states. And providing the incentive to be as cruel as possible.
That's the thing with the logic against it, you end up arguing that it should be done on a federal level and agreeing with the person you're arguing with.
Always worth the time for a reply tho. Hopefully it sticks.
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There's always some place that's worse. What you're arguing for here is a race to the bottom, where everyone tries to be worse than their neighbours in order to get the undesirables to go there instead.
In essentially "the tragedy of the commons" but in an opposite sense. If everyone gets worse in an attempt to get rid of "undesirables", you just end up with everywhere being worse, and the "undesirables" still being around. What we need is for everyone to build safety nets together. That might actually improve the situation.
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I say this the respect you are due. Fuck you.
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Oh god forbid we create a society where thousands of people don’t need help!
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They keep dealing with the symptoms of the problem but never the root of the problem.
Namely the weak, cowardly, ignorant, parasitic minority of wealthy idiots that want to horde the wealth of the world for their own short insignificant lives.
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The 90s in the USA were a simpler time, but some folks got it: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Cs-O4k9jZzE
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Closing Down The Park
Blues Traveler
12:55
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Bulldoze the community garden
And replace it with glass
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Well duh. If people start gathering in public and talking to each other with a modicum of comfort, they might get thoughts in their heads
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And thoughts lead to actions!
And you know what's an action? Addressing the wage gap!
We must stop that!
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To add another layer: allowing homelessness is one of the most widespread and visible acts of violence perpetrated by the state, supported by the market, and accepted-- or at least tolerated-- by most of the public. I wonder if institutions don't address it because scares people into obedience.
Reflect on the focus of violence in stories about slavery. Hypothetically, without violence, slavery is still awful: robbing a human of their autonomy, spending their lives bettering the lot of those in power rather than their own. But we focus on the violence, not only because of the obvious, visible horror, but because you can't rob someone of their autonomy without violence.
When it comes to homelessness, the violent act is not only inaction: failing to address risks and pitfalls, or add safety nets (focusing on growth, instead), but also what your original post is about: removing public facilities, forcing people to play the line-go-up game in order to have nice things, lest they have a string of bad luck and end up on the street, exposed to the elements.
The state and market didn't cause the blizzard that may kill unhoused people, but they did nothing to try to get them out of its path. Isn't that the purpose of these institutions? Yet homelessness is everywhere and it makes being unemployed all the more terrifying-- to be that much closer to the streets. "Better to take what you can get," participate in an unjust market or it could be you.
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Which is why we need a world where people are constantly being forced to move and never allowed to ever stop moving, for fear that they may some day stop and think.
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It's kind of crazy how swiftly Occupy was wiped off the zeitgeist. A key cultural event of the 2010s gone as if it never happened.
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Far more often than not, even bloody revolutions do not achieve their goals, or lead to merely cosmetic and/ or short-lived changes. E.g. Kent Gang Deng investigated 269 major peasant rebellions over 2106 years of Chinese history. Guess how many of these actually rewrote history in any way, shape or form.
Recently, I've been reading several interesting pieces on the "Occupy" movement, the related G20 and other protests in the Western world, dating back as far as the 1960s. The bottom line being: asking nicely for some minimum demands that even conservative politicians can get behind, like capping CEOs' wages, will not get the job done. In fact, some of the powers that be can use it for their internal power struggles and to show it off as a sort of legitimization folklore. "See how democratic we are? We even have protesters in little tents! Don't worry, they aren't hurting anyone."
All hope is not lost, though, if new protest modalities can be found.
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That's why Putin made public gatherings illegal
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I'm currently on vacation in California at an outdoor mall. I'm squat/sitting on a tiny piece of concrete that's like 8” off the ground and am so mad that I can relate to this picture. Why the fuck can't we just have benches!?!
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Because poor people might use them, so fuck you pleb.
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How long did it take for a mall cop to tell you to stand up?
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Well, it's mall. Its goal is maximizing profits.
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I'm visiting Naples at the moment with my Italian boyfriend, and I remarked to him that Naples has a lot of places that people can just hang out without spending money, something that the UK has lost. Part of this is due to the climate, but also corporatism hasn't hit Italy as hard as other western countries. It really is a shame.
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corporatism hasn’t hit Italy as hard as other western countries
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I wish society would put more into making the world work better for rule followers instead of focusing so much on punishing rule breaking (which often punishes everyone).
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I don't think being poor should be cause of being seen to be a rule breaker.
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You target poor/homeless with laws aimed to "prevent loitering". The "rule breakers" are the people who simply are affected the most by the laws. Being poor shouldn't cause you to break rules but think about it, overdraft fees, late fees, etc all targeted at the poor. Like someone else said earlier the punishment is aimed at a symptom not the problem. It's why we're all here lamenting about how ridiculous it is.
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Agreed, imagine if instead of tearing down benches so people couldn’t sleep in the park, they instead added bike lifts to help people get up a steep hill in the park or maybe a sprinkler system for the kids to play in.. actually adding value and stuff
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Removing public amenities is just the first step. The next step is to erect fencing around public parks and other spots where people like to enjoy themselves. Source: living in Dublin "the city centre is for working and shopping only" Ireland.
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Fuckin trashbag the more you read about him.
Motherfucker purposely built the bridges for local streets going over the highways much lower than avg to prevent buses (and thus poorer folks) from being able to get to Jones beach: https://www.nycurbanism.com/blog/2020/7/28/robert-moses-low-parkway-bridges
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Freedom before capitalism happens.
Free dumb after capitalism happens.
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You know how in the south, they closed public pools instead of desegregating because they would rather have no pools than let black people swim?
That impulse didn't go away. And it wasn't limited to the south and their hatred of black people.
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Reminds me of that story about a sports field that got weird „opening hours“ because some old fuck nearby didn’t like the children being noisy near his house. After some months it got turned into a parking lot because „no one was using the sports field“.
Bro, I hate children too. But you have to draw the line at lung cancer.
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That's kind of my head canon of why the park near my parent's house no longer has benches. It's three blocks away from a school, and kids/teens would hang out there.
Guessing some Karen whose house faced the park flipped their shit.
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So he hates the noise the youth made, but is ok with people revving to the extremes.
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Hopefully it's because they're putting in new benches made from the bones of real estate tycoons ❤️💖
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They got rid of them at the bus stop near me. There used to be an indoor space for people to wait in, but they closed that down. And this is in Alaska. Having to wait a half an hour for the bus to arrive after taken a shower is a shitty way to wake up.
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The boring-dystopia solution: a company that rents out chairs, and records everything that happens around those chairs for training AIs.
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Their excuse, 'for the safety of children'.
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Shhh. Don’t give them ideas
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It's as if they don't want you to be able to get out of your house and socialise except for some paid time at private properties (cafes, restaurants etc). And no this isn't just a US problem, it's a Europe problem as well.
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I've bought a camping stool recently. It folds up and small enough to put in a backpack.
I have twisted discs and find it difficult sometimes to find a seat. Sucks. But man, I can't recommend camping stools enough! I love this thing.
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Brand and model recommendation(s), please
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I just saw one in a local'ish shop of mine, for £4. It doesn't have any branding on it, sorry!
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My aunt got me a "Helinox sunset chair" recently and I love it. Pricey, wouldn't have bought it for myself, but it weighs nothing and it's comfy.
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I'd love a hard case backpack that has a seat and chair legs that can fold down.
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There's a few zombies in there. It's like playing wheres waldo
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Just people living their best radioactive lives and you're mocking them?
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"They Live" by John Carpenter for those thinking this is some AI generated image
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to be fair, it's the NIMBY people complaining to the state about those people, and then the ordinances being passed
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Then there's the whole corporate aspect. How can you expect corporate businesses to drive people to be in their stores if you let them loiter around outside on government provided benches? If the only place to sit is in a Starbucks and they require you to buy something to stay in the store, well...
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incidentally, the people who frequent starbucks overlap with the NIMBY people in the venn diagram of people responsible for hostile architecture
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Nothing is going to change until "landlord culture" is suppressed, and we re-adopt a "homeowner" mentality.
We need to massively raise taxes on residential property, but institute an "owner occupant" credit so actual homeowners don't pay the increase. Only landlords - people who own the property but don't live in it - will pay the increase. Residential property taxes should be the highest of all property taxes without the credit, but effective tax rate should be the lowest due to that credit. Landlords should be fighting for any way they can to convert "tenants" into "buyers", even if that means issuing private mortgages to their (former) tenants to make it happen.
What about people with short-term housing needs? People who prefer to rent rather than owning? Not a problem: "Land Contracts" work very much like rentals, but without the annual increase that always outpaces inflation. The monthly payment is fixed for the life of the agreement.
The main difference is that after three years, a land contract automatically converts to a purchase agreement, and the previous 3 years of "rent" are retroactively converted to payments on a private mortgage. You're 3 years into a 30-year mortgage.
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Guys. I am pretty sure that is Moynihan train station next to Penn Station. People sitting on the floor are literally leaning against the stairs down to the track. Thats is where people lineup to go on the train when it arrives at the station. Of course you don't put benches there. In this station there is a seating area where all you need to do is show your train ticket. On the other side there's a food hall with lots of public seating. There just isn't seating directly where all the foot traffic is. I take trains in the North East corridor on Amtrak somewhat often. There's seats there. Just not where seating would obstruct movement on and off the train platforms.
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Of course you don’t put benches there.
I'm not following. Why not? This is clearly a place where people gather and then wait for a period of time long enough to feel that sitting is necessary. Provide a fucking place for them to sit, it's not complicated
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seating area where all you need to do is show your train ticket
This is still fucked
On the other side there's a food hall with lots of public seating.
"GIVE YOUR MONEY!"
Just not where seating would obstruct movement on and off the train platforms.
All I see is huge open area. You can even put them right on platform.
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Look at a station map or visit the station. When you have 2 or more trains boarding near simultaneously the queue to get down the the platform level is pretty long and snakes. There's a difference between waiting for a train at a terminating station where you don't know the the track assignment vs boarding a train at a non terminating stop or minor station where the is no grand hall. Moynihan has underground non open air platforms so you need to keep people waiting above in the hall since there's not a lot of room at platform level.
This is the map:
See that area on the right called ticketed waiting room? That is where everyone with a train ticket can sit at a bench/chair or grab a table/desk to do some work. On the other side there is a food hall. As someone that travels out of that station regularly, I think the design totally makes sense based on the size, amount of foot traffic, and etc. If I need a place to sit before my train boards, I know where to sit.
The waiting area with seats:
These are the one way escalators that you don't line with benches where people queue to get up. You don't want people sitting and possibly blocking the escalators either.
The real crime here to complain about is that the Old Penn Station was destroyed to put in a MSG. We have a stadium at the expense of a well designed train station. Moynihan being built next door on a small footprint really was a breath of fresh air to a terrible train station. You don't get situations like this in Moynihan: https://www.westsidespirit.com/binrepository/576x432/0c0/0d0/none/3502612/ODJP/penn1_4-3802539_20211210112648.jpg
Instead you get this queue for 1 train boarding on track 13/14. (it is worse if there's multiple trains boarding simultaneously):
If there are multiple simultaneous boardings, I am not sure if they use space between escalators to snake the line instead of wrapping around all escalators (at times I do see some of those lane rope things in use to encourage people to no clog up the middle to foot traffic) That does not compare to a minor philadelphia suburb platform where you wait on the platform because the already full train isn't going to stop for more than 2 minutes to pick up a few passengers. That would be a massive safety risk to allow this kind of seating on platform in NYC rail system with underground platforms. And this is not even considering how to move people off a train before moving the next group on the train. Also crew changes since NYC is a terminating station for a lot of lines.You can have folks queuing up and still have a lot of room for people to navigate through the main hall. Probably as a much a security and anti-terrorism feature as well as a design to not obstruct boarding or create bottle necks for emergency egress.
I don't think you'll find many new yorkers complaining about a lack of seating in Moynihan right on the main hall where all the foot traffic is. We like it when people get the fuck out of our way while we try to get from point A to B.
Edit: also I don't think people understand the scale of NYC's population and train rider ship. Moynihan ridership is 8 million annually. 2nd place is DC with 3.6 million. Moynihan is a amtrak only station so it's built for luggage, but even then Moynihan is probably a smaller station than either DC or Philly, yet has over double the ridership. I don't think folks appreciate how much traffic goes through a relatively small train station, but I think that factors into the design of NYC stations vs any other picture you have of spacious stations that have less than half the ridership in buildings of comparable size.
Edit 2: In this thread people that don't understand the difference between Amtrak, regional commuter trains, or subways, or the difference between urban vs suburban stations, above ground vs underground stations, and the fact that NYC has over double the annual amtrak ridership than the 2nd and 3rd most used amtrak stations. Not to mention, NYC has tons of benches and public seating. Sections of broadway are closed down with chairs and tables out, bryant park isn't too far away with tons of public seating. Not surprised that the small train station is designed to have seating options only for riders of the train.
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30th St Station in Philly, and I'm sure many other train stations in the world, has a similar layout with stairs down to the tracks. And has benches along the railing. The benches don't obstruct the movement of people going up or down the stairs, but start from the top of the stairs and sit along the unused space to the sides of the stairs. The line to show tickets forms to one side of the stairs so that while passengers leaving the train can go up the stairs on their right the passengers joing can go down on their right. If you are early to your train, you can sit right there in the front of the line on a comfortable bench, and the line can form behind you.
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The layout is different in philly. Train stairs are on the sides of the main hall, not in the center of it. The center of the main hall is clear of seats to allow traffic to come through. The design of moynihan puts the stairs to the tracks in the middle of the hall, not the sides of the hall. So the seating options are put near the side to allow more flow of traffic in the center of the hall. I'm also pretty sure this is also a result of modern anti-terrorism design to be easier for security as well. Seating exists for waiting. At Moynihan they don't really announce what track your train will be on until like 5 or 10 minutes before boarding starts. So there's not really a way to know where to wait for 'your' train even if benches were next to the tracks.
Also, 30th St Station in philly has less than half the annual amtrak ridership as Moynihan, but roughly the same size building.
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Moynihan train station
Man, there's an entire article about how there's not enough seating there.
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Just imagine if we used the many resources for removing these or creating benches that can't be laid on and instead focused them on fixing. the. housing. crisis. or any other multitude of problems that get kicked down the road so everyone suffers more together.
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Ya, I would love some public restrooms and urinals.
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No more public urinals. AFABs might use them, and who wants to look over into the urinal next to them and see a chick in khakis with a she-wee? That's just weird.
(Giant /s if not obvious).
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hehe.
she-wee her-man.
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I've had bad feet since teen years, and I'm in my 40s now, which means sitting down once in a while is no longer just a suggestion. One of my big whinges (practicing whinging in case I ever get old) is that there's just not damn enough public benches. And I live in a city that has public benches and has brought them back. A little bit.
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Come to Oslo. Public seating everywhere. I really do miss it when I'm traveling to certain other cities, like Rome
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And somehow there's more homeless people and vagrants
It's about as successful as the war on drugs. Or the war on Emus.
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This isn't to reduce the number of homeless people.
It's to reduce the number of homeless people here.
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The park in my parent's neighborhood got rid of all the benches
This might not be some nefarious government plan, though.
Just this past weekend, I came across a fairly popular bench on a local bike path that was completely destroyed by someone who had to break it in half.
A few weeks back, another bench was burned up.
And at another local resting area, their (plastic?) picnic table was also defaced and unusable.
A park I grew up near was completely torched one day (all wooden structures), and it took years for metal equipment to go up in its place.
People who vandalize and misuse these fixtures are the reason why they end up being removed 99% of the time. And it's unfair to everyone else.
Hell, we've had entire sheltered bus stops have their glass destroyed, and they just take the whole thing down and don't replace it. As a taxpayer, I can understand not wanting to flip the bill for another thing for someone to destroy, but it still frustrates me that people can't behave.
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It doesn't excuse it but in my town there is literally nothing (free) for teenagers to do besides one lowly skate ramp. Bored kids find their own fun and some of the blame for their destructive behaviour must lie with the town planners who ignore the younger population.
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I really agree! Every time my municipality asks for public feedback on new parks or parks they plan to update, I always make it a point to make sure that all age groups (including teens) are covered.
But even in areas where teens are expected to be using the space (bike parks, skateboard ramps, basketball courts, etc.), they need to stop vandalizing those spots, or else they will simply not be built anymore. We've had basketball courts, soccer nets, and baseball diamonds destroyed by “bored kids”, and there's no incentive to pay tens of thousands to fix the damage, just so they can do it again.
We had a new waterfront park built just a year ago, and within days three teens caused over $50,000 damage to it. Like, WTF??
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Some people just need their kneecaps broken to learn how to live in society
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That picture is a great example. Moynihan train hall is the absolute worst
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Moynihan is exceptionally difficult to just loiter in (which is a weird thing to say about a place where people wait for trains) but apparently that's what it takes to be better than the old Penn Station.
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It's an USA problem. Still sad of course.
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Out door trash receptacles as well.
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Governments? Well, if you assume governments are controlled by wealthy people who don’t want to pay taxes and dislike the poors hanging around, sure.
All those public items cost tax money to maintain, and taxes are evil. Also, you can’t have the poors and rabble lazing about. They need to be making more money for the rich. So no benches or other leisure spaces for you.
Make the rich richer and don’t make them pay for it.
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This concerns me greatly. For now we have old grandmas sitting on benches(it is scary to take away benches from them), but they won't last forever.
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Assuming Dudebro McChismo didn't get their first. He won't give up his seat for a little old lady...that shit is for betas.
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My city removed the basketball hoop and concrete pad that was there for it. Two years later they put in a pickleball court for the old folks. Want to guess why?
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Want to guess why?
I am sure we can all guess, but make sure you call the city and kindly ask them to explain it. Then when they give you some bullshit excuse you can politely call them out. No swearing, no anger, and be brief.
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A picture of Moynihan Train Hall there's other places to sit (almost entirely restaurants) out of shot, and this floor is usually full of crowds moving on/off trains from what I've seen. Maybe a snow delay caused this?
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It's like taking certain types of painkillers that gets rid of the pain - you don't feel it anymore, but it is still there hidden from you. The thing causing it is still there as well. We need the anti-inflammatory equivalent of dealing with homelessness.
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You can't have homeless sleeping on benches, it looks bad and scares away the touri$t$... real estate agencies probably agree.
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Eh, I'd rather have better places for homeless to live than in public spaces.
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then we shall sit on the floor
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People in my neighborhood fuck up the benches. Light them on fire, or break them etc
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there are places where sitting on the floor is forbidden, like big train stations in germany. I think its only houserules, but security can kick you out anyway.
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As far as restrooms specifically, we need to solve a few other issues to make that one work. Drug abuse, antisocial behavior, and mental issues. If we have public restrooms but someone has smashed the fixtures, smeared shit on the walls or is passed out in there from an opiate overdose, it’s not actually better than not having a restroom.
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This is your brain on America
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Uh, what? My brain is "on America" because I said we should work on drug abuse and overdose prevention and treat mental conditions, plus the conditions that make people engage in antisocial behavior? Or that I don't want to go into a restroom with someone passed out on fentanyl?
I'd add, maybe you haven't lived in urban areas with drug problems and seen this personally, or maybe you just want to be a Redditor and insult people. Idk. I had a gf who worked at a Starbucks in downtown Denver and they regularly had to figure out wtf to do with a person who had been in the bathroom for an hour and a half, and it usually turned out to be someone who had ODed on opiates. That was 10 years ago. It's worse now.
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Ok but why do people here WANT park benches to become homeless encampments? I don't get that, that's not what they're for
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Maybe the solution has nothing to do with park benches. Maybe if people had homes, they wouldn't have to sleep in the park.
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So why all this bitching about benches then???
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There's a big difference between wanting benches more than not wanting homeless encampments and actively wanting benches to become homeless encampments.
Having public facilities that are actually useful is worth the "risk" of someone sleeping there because they have no where else to sleep. Fix homelessness by addressing the causes. Comfortable benches don't cause homelessness.-
I come from a country where all the public parks have been turned into permanent shanty towns. I have no idea why anyone would want that
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There are more empty homes than homeless people. There is no housing shortage, it's a myth. Put benches, public transport, walkable infrastructure, bike infrastructure, etc everywhere. And then when those dastardly evil homeless people show up and dare to use your person-centric infrastructure to exist, that's when you ambush them with a house. What better way to punish them than to strip them of their homeless identity? We'll brutally steal their homelessness from them, feed them, clothe them, and then they won't feel any need to sleep on our nice benches ever again.
Does this framing help you understand or does it have to actually involve violence against the downtrodden for you to be on board?
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You're free to open your yard to homeless who want a safe place to sleep, heck you can open your couch for say least one right? Go find a homeless person and give them a place to sleep in your home... But I know you won't
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