PUBLIC BENCH FITTED WITH DIVIDERS PREVENTS LYING DOWN AND MOST SITTING

The bench is not broken. It is exactly as intended. The dividers are evenly spaced, properly welded, and painted the same colour as the rest of the street furniture. The only thing they prevent is rest.

Hostile architecture is the practice of solving a public nuisance by making the nuisance disappear rather than addressing it. A person without a bed is treated as a problem of sightlines. The bench is redesigned so that the person cannot lie on it, and therefore, in the logic of the specification, is no longer there.

The cost is borne by every other user. A parent with a toddler cannot sit sideways. A traveller with a suitcase cannot set it beside them. An older person who needs to lower themselves slowly finds the dividers in the way of their knees. The bench has become an advertisement for a city that prefers objects to people.

There are alternatives that do not cost more: benches of ordinary length without intermediate dividers, paired with services that actually reduce homelessness. The bench is not one of them. The bench is a policy made of metal.