The daytime… of the night

Now, I understand that the merchant’s association in this story is just trying to create a comfortable place for people to shop. I bet they view this in the same light as making sure the sidewalks are repaired and that there are plenty of parking spaces.

Bench-warmers sought to block homeless | Article Link

SAN DIEGO (AP) – A community activist thinks a few couch potatoes, strategically placed on sidewalk benches in an upscale shopping district, will keep transients on their feet and on the move.

Esther Viti, who oversees the donation of public benches for a merchants’ association in La Jolla, sent an e-mail to 45 other activists last week asking them to sit in three-hour shifts, no bathroom breaks allowed.

“After all, you MUST OCCUPY THAT BENCH continually for three hours to prevent that homeless person from sitting on that bench,” the e-mail said.

Donors weren’t happy that transients were sleeping on benches they had provided for the public, Viti said.

The group previously tried installing benches with metal dividers that split the seats. Transients simply began sleeping upright, said Deborah Marengo, president of Promote La Jolla.

No one has offered to sit a shift yet, Viti said. Some potential recruits expressed concern that the bench brigade could provoke retaliation from displaced transients.

In 2006, the Regional Task Force on Homeless estimated the homeless population at 9,600 countywide, which included 4,400 people within the city of San Diego.
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Mark Luthringer explores monotony.
And how we have become so used to it that we don’t really care much anymore.
I love this one becuase there are a couple that you swear are just duplicates until you look closely at the landscaping!

Are we bored and just settling for boring? Or even a better question… is there nothing new under the sun? Is there too much effort and cost required to create something new? Is the price for innovation so high (ie, education, materials, right-place/right-time, moral fortitude, etc) that it has become inaccessible to a couple of guys with a garage, some computer parts, and some spare time.

Check out the entire series of Ridgemont Typologies at his website

I still feel like it’s the end of the world when I see a shopping center replace the exterior life of a city…

— Philip Nobel, Good Malls and Bad Cities in the March issue of Metropolis.