Instagram photo by FeeBee510.The San Francisco Chronicle reports that in Oakland, the stump of a tree that had been cut down was carved into a chair. Later, someone carved into the stump chair a passage from the book, The Giving Tree.
Creative seating in the public space is an element of the public realm framework.
====
Earlier this week was introduced to the website of a firm called Street Furniture, which manufactures and sells street furniture, natch, but also does public space planning and consulting work.
While they have a website for the US, the firm is based in Australia and the firm's Aussie website includes writings on public space matters in a section called streetchat.
there seems to be an uneven and unspoken policy on street furniture in places like the eastern market metro plaza- which at one time had park benches- then they were taken away- I had heard- to discourage drunks and mendicants from sleeping on them. It does not appear to have done much to decrease this activity but it sure makes it difficult for elderly and young mothers with children, etc. to find a place to rest . This sort of thing needs clarification and explanation from city officials who never let us know why they make decisions such as these.
ReplyDeleteWe need different ways of managing public spaces. If you have management and programming, you can deal with vagrancy, and you can have street furniture, when by contrast if it is unattended, it can be problematic rather than beneficial.
ReplyDeleteI aim to write about this soon.
right now everybody suffers
ReplyDelete