Thank you! I'm surprised by the amount of traffic submitting it may take out on a server. I wonder if I should put in better caches and controls on my own sites!
Well I don't use Wordpress and easily survived the HN homepage (third position) on a low-end Intel Atom-powered server... but I suppose you might also turn on caching if you really want to stick with the good ol' Wordpress...
If anything I hope the latest anti homeless spike story to open people's eyes a little bit more as to how our urban environment is planned and designed... and by extension to more things in our lives.
99% Invisble had a few episodes that touched on that theme, primarily The Arsenal of Exclusion[1], but also the episode on the LOVE Park[2], which discussed the anti-skating measures (and includes one of the park designers skating in protest, at 92 years old!), and an episode on the Privately Owned Public Open Spaces (POPOS), which are often designed to discourage the public from actually using them.
It is a bit of an arms race. A war on pigeons and homeless people.
At some point the space under those benches with too many arm-rests will look like a pretty good place to sleep given the alternatives. So the next step will be some extra legs to prohibit sleeping under a bench. Then sleeping behind a bench will look pretty good given the alternatives, so benches will have to be located next to walls. It could do on until there is no such thing as street furniture and nobody dare put street furniture up just out of fear that it will attract homeless people. Our outdoor environment will then be entirely privatised, where, if you need a seat, you pay.
Shelters clearly do not suit homeless people most of the time, maybe we need to think about using some normal benches in a 'honeypot' configuration, so the homeless community know there is somewhere that they can sleep rough without being abused and kept up all night.
In most of the other examples you can rationalise the control aspect "oh, it's to prevent stupid people injuring themselves" or "it doesn't stop law abiding people from..."
In the topical spikes example there is no such rationalisation that we can do and this is why there is such outrage. Because it hurts psychologically, because we cannot pretend it's not there. The outrage is not really about homelessness - it's about our shame.
