Anyway, what kind of city is it where no smelly hobos are allowed, not a single grafitto, not a scrap of paper, no noise, no dog poop, no pigeons (which is the place this “removal of all inconveniences and offensive things” must leaad to) - isn’t life in the city (also) about the multifacetted nature of thousands, even millions of people, occupying the same small geographic space…?

As one city dweller, I’d thank my local authorities not to go there.

I think there is a place in site design to discourage activities like drug-dealing, but you can do that best by simply avoiding hidden alcoves. Similarly, you do have to be aware that if you provide heated shelters in the downtown, some rubbies will use them as shelters. That doesn’t mean that ordinary people shouldn’t have a decent place to sit, and to rest their parcels.

It’s really deeply unfriendly to public space and to pedestrians.

So, und jetzt bitte alle man raten, an welchem Tag Telepolis auf meine Seite verlinkt hat (und das, kurz nachdem der Berechnungsmodus für die blogscout-Topliste geändertverbessert wurde, was für manchen eine freudige Überraschung bedeutete)

Hier …

The cracks are being papered over so that it will be inherited by the next council of crack-paperers to be elected in a few year’s time. Let’s admire the 14th century brickwork and let the cracks remind us that subsidence must be dealt with very shortly.

As with so many things, the symptoms are being ‘treated’ rather than the causes. It’s apparently more expedient to paper over the cracks (get the homeless out of sight, ’stop’ the public doing this or that) than to address the problem itself, because addressing the problem is a) difficult, b) requires longer-term thinking and c) has a risk of failure, which would make those involved look ’silly’.

Mags - thanks so much for the photos & notes - I’ll update the post accordingly.

Requirements for a free bed:
1) Functional - works as a bed
2) Comfortable - good night’s sleep possible without too many aches and pains in the morning
3) Sightly - not too unfamiliar - may even look like a bench
4) Useful in daytime - can be used as a bench or other purpose when not in use as a bed
5) Hygienic - self-cleaning by rain, or with assistance from hose pipe or newspaper covering
6) Tidy - nearby litter bin for disposal of bed covering
7) Secure - exposed for security through public visibility
Resilient - withstand hard treatment and vandalistic attentions without significant functional detriment

Someone must be able to design such a bed eh?

“But, they will encourage vagrants”

They may be useful to vagrants, but that’s no reason not to provide them. It would be like an airport not providing free seating because it encouraged poor people (who couldn’t even afford a cup of coffee) to fly.

If vagrants are a problem, then free beds will reveal that problem more than cause it. And revealing problems is better than hiding them.

“But vagrants are smelly. They can sleep in the hills.”

So, provide free showers (solar heated, and gravity fed by rain or spring water).

“But vagrants are abusive”

They might be nicer if they felt a little more welcome in our town centers.

“They intoxicate themselves with alcohol and drugs”

Provide rewarding activities and entertainment?

“Not possible. Vagrants are incorrigible”

Perhaps one or two, who’ve been made that way because of a lifetime of rejection by intransigent councils and intolerant townsfolk?

However, not providing free, static sun loungers to members of the public in public parks simply because smelly and abusive people tend to use them seems a bit churlish. Next, you’ll be trying to redesign park benches to prevent their use as beds too.

Vagrants, tramps, gypsies, travellers, illegal immigrants, asylum seekers, are all human beings and all entitled to be classed as members of the public. When did ‘public’ get changed to mean ‘taxpayer of fixed abode’ that councils can start excluding others from consideration except as an unsanitary caste to be hidden or otherwised treated as criminals?

If a certain group of people are a problem, they should be brought into prominence so that society may deal with them (accept, assist, and address). To hide them, or make the urban environment unattractive to them is divisive and inhuman, let alone detrimental to the urban environment.

I’m not saying open the floodgates to shanty towns. I’m saying a problem that is being hidden from public view, by removing value from public spaces, is revealing a problem that isn’t being dealt with. The cracks are being papered over so that it will be inherited by the next council of crack-paperers to be elected in a few year’s time. Let’s admire the 14th century brickwork and let the cracks remind us that subsidence must be dealt with very shortly.

Either we shouldn’t have homeless people and their existence should be brought to everyone’s attention (and why not in our public spaces), or we should have homeless people and our public spaces should welcome them.

We can’t treat unsightly people like pigeons and put tons of little spikes in the places that they like perching so they don’t mess up the place. Some councils evidently believe they can, but then the committee mind, like the psychopathic mind of commercial organisations, can easily drift into sociopathic behaviour.

What is wrong with the nomad?

What is wrong with the hunter?

Who fenced off the commons?

We are the comfortable criminals who cast out our crude cousins.