• Egon [they/them]
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    edit-2
    11 months ago

    There is one thing to be said for it, which I think could be interpreted as sincere if you really wanna give them the benetof the doubt (I dont).

    They wanted to design a busstop that also felt safe for women. Designing urban infrastructure is always difficult, because you need to balance a lot of different needs. One of these is the need for safety/perceived safety. No one will use something, if they perceive it as unsafe to do so. Another need is that for secluded spaces in public space. These two often come I to conflict, and it can be hard to solve the two.
    They allegedly wanted to make something safer for people to use, that could be installed on narrow sidewalks.

    However they completely fucked up, and if that was what they actually wanted to do, they could've just copied one of the many existing tried-and-true designs.
    They managed to make something "safe" by virtue of it not really being there anymore. Can't feel unsafe because of poor visibility in the structure by the busstop, if the bus stop has no structure think-about-it

    Alternatively they could've talked to the people making use of the bus and people wanting to make use of the bus. City planners are deathly afraid of citizen participation and it sucks, because citizens are often the most insightful with regards to their needs.