Benches are awesome. If there is one simple object every city should install everywhere, it's benches. Benches allow for people to chill together outside. A good abundance of benches can mean the difference between a country where people go outside and meet one another, and a country where everybody stays indoors playing video games and watching television forever.
I think every block should have at least one or two benches. There are several logistical issues which come with benches. In no particular order, they can include:
Who will build these benches? What materials will be used? Where will they be placed? Will there be enough shade? What will they be looking at?
I propose a few things.
First, we should have public workshops in the middle of town where people are welcome to come and participate in carpentry projects. The city will sponsor them. In these workshops, teachers, students, and regular townspeople will come together to build:
- Canoes and kayaks
- Playground equipment
- Musical instruments
- Printing presses and more complex tools like pantographs
- Sustainable vehicles for enhanced mobility, such as wagons and chariots, and maybe even bamboo train tracks
- Furniture: Desks, cabinets, dressers, even design work spaces for the townspeople
- Pots, for plants, compost containers, and short barriers, such as around paths and gardens
- And, of course, benches
The second big deal is what materials will be used. Wood and bamboo are big ones, and they should be harvested both locally and sustainably. There is a thing called silviculture, which is a fairly ancient method of sustainably harvesting trees. It is related to permaculture, which is a thing everybody should at least know exists.
In silviculture, trees are planted and harvested in cycles, ensuring continuous forest growth, and attention is paid to local ecology. Hardwood and native species can be grown on lots within two or three blocks from the workshop. They should be grown on multiple lots, of course - the more the better. Aside from wood, this will produce many benefits to the city, including cleaner air, higher quality of life, shade, fruits, leafy groundcover, better soils, and wildlife habitat. The tree-growing lots can also function as parks, full of paths and benches. Using deciduous trees in colder climates will ensure that people will be able to sit in the sun in winter, and in the shade in summer. The Earth is quite the engineer, when you think about it.
Many cities are beginning to plant trees around the streets, which is excellent, but some problems arise. One problem is that sometimes cities will plant trees without paying attention to whether or not they are invasive. Another problem is monoculture - sometimes the city will plant exactly the same tree way too many times when others can be used. Another, specifically for fruit trees - which should be planted in absolute abundance everywhere possible - is that fruits can fall down and splatter all over the street. Eventually, with some good design, we can progress to the point where cities are entirely pedestrian and have no need for cars, but until then, it is not that easy to plant as many fruit trees as we should. Planting them in parks should eliminate this problem. If the fruits are heavy maybe the trees should have nets or something to catch the fruits.
As I mentioned in another article, some cities (Buenos Aires in particular, but maybe some North American cities, too) have an abundance of Fraxinus pennsylvanica, a very short-lived tree with a thirty to fifty-year lifespan. This creates an opportunity to harvest these trees every now and then.
As we begin to harvest our own wood and produce our own benches, we can start to improve the city. More benches will bring more people outside and encourage human interaction. Strangers will meet. Neighbors will get to know one another. It'll be great.
This image is from the Public Bench Project, a project in San Francisco which is making benches. Good job guys.
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