this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2024
1603 points (99.1% liked)
Microblog Memes
5787 readers
3485 users here now
A place to share screenshots of Microblog posts, whether from Mastodon, tumblr, ~~Twitter~~ X, KBin, Threads or elsewhere.
Created as an evolution of White People Twitter and other tweet-capture subreddits.
Rules:
- Please put at least one word relevant to the post in the post title.
- Be nice.
- No advertising, brand promotion or guerilla marketing.
- Posters are encouraged to link to the toot or tweet etc in the description of posts.
Related communities:
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I think the answer, as an engineer, is to sit and observe the station at busy times, take note of where people are sitting, and put some benches there.
But the post is really about the disappearance of benches from public spaces in the U.S. as a whole, with the intended effect of keeping the homeless population out of view. Instead of facing the root cause of the homeless epidemic, we're merely brushing them aside, out of the way, where we can pretend they don't exist. It's really awful, and further traumatizes an already at-risk population by reinforcing the idea that they're not wanted, don't matter, and aren't worth helping. They're people, we should be doing more to help them. The benches aren't really the issue.
Nice thing about NYC is that housing is a right based on the Callahan v. Carey ruling. Every person that asks for temporary shelter is supposed to have access to it. It's not perfect, doesn't have the funding or capacity to deal with the bussed in migrants, but it's better than most cities/states. And it does more to address the issue directly than viewing benches as a crutch for the problem.
But re the engineer question, I think Moynihan probably had a lot of engineers. And safety, security, egress, congestion, etc were considered in the design which is why they put seating around the perimeter and not the center of the hall.