Hostile architecture: Bus stop benches in Piraeus for acrobats only

In times when organizations and municipalities respected citizens and wanted to offer real service, benches at the bus stops would offer a comfortable seat to anyone in need: elderly, disabled, pregnant women. These times are long gone and benches are replaced by some shelves fixed together by some idiot who does not manage read correcntly the instructions and get together the simplest IKEA cube.

 

However, the benches installed by the Public Bus Organization OASA in Keratsini and other areas of Piraeus have nothing to do with two left hands in one body… They are as they are on purpose.

The purpose is what we nowadays call: hostile architecture. That is an urban-design strategy that uses elements to create an overall unwelcoming environment for the community. As governments and businesses use this urban design strategy it creates a less convenient environment for people. And it is unethical.

You want to seat waiting for the bus 10, 20, some times 40 minutes? Impossible. The moment your body tries to relax on the human unfriendly shelf for a second, that very same moment you slip down and find yourself right on the hard concrete.

If you’re young and healthy, you escape the tiny reckless moment without harm. If you’re older with fragile bones, you find yourself in the hospital ER checking how nicely they wrap your legs and hands and maybe the end of your spine in plaster casts.

Another hostile architect in the same area was enlightened to invent a bus stop bench for …dwarfs.

The seat is just 20 cm from the ground. You normally know how these things work: you sit or rather fall downon the bench and you can hardly get up.

If you’re lucky your great-grandchildren or some GEN X+Z+Whatever of the far future may find your skeleton forgotten on such a bench.

As I hear around, ideas are endless. Like this one ⇓

PS Sometimes I wish Greece would not import only negative trends from abroad but also positive and community-oriented ones.