摘要：在纽约，一张公共长椅的变迁，折射出城市的隐秘伤痕。从中央公园的铸铁座椅到地铁站的倾斜栏杆，看似微小的设计背后，是一场持续数十年的“空间战争”。当长椅被装上分隔扶手，车站只设靠栏，火车站大厅难觅座位——这些被称作“敌对性建筑”的设计，正悄悄改变着城市的温度。本文

有趣灵魂说

在纽约，一张公共长椅的变迁，折射出城市的隐秘伤痕。从中央公园的铸铁座椅到地铁站的倾斜栏杆，看似微小的设计背后，是一场持续数十年的“空间战争”。当长椅被装上分隔扶手，车站只设靠栏，火车站大厅难觅座位——这些被称作“敌对性建筑”的设计，正悄悄改变着城市的温度。本文通过百年来的长椅演变史，揭示公共空间如何从包容走向排斥，以及这场无声变革背后，关于无家可归者、老龄化困境与城市公共性的深层博弈。

译文为原创，仅供个人学习使用

The New York Times ｜The Front Page

纽约时报 | 头版

The Slow Death of the New York City Public Bench

纽约市公共长椅的缓慢消亡

Over the years, the bench has evolved from a public amenity to a way to control homeless populations by leaving little or no room to sit down.

多年来，长椅已从一种公共设施演变为通过留下极少或根本没有座位空间来控制无家可归者人口的一种方式。

公共长椅是纽约市生活的标配。喂鸽子的女士们坐在上面抛撒鸟食。表演性的阅读者炫耀着一本《罪与罚》。外国间谍秘密会面。梅格·瑞恩和汤姆·汉克斯在浪漫喜剧中插科打诨。

在一个我们感到日益分裂和彼此疏离的世界里，长椅可以是集体体验的象征。但在一个拥有如此多人口和如此少空间的城市里，它们也是黄金地段，并且是紧张关系的根源。

今年，负责监管地铁的大都会运输署在曼哈顿西村一个客流量很大的地铁站安装了倚靠式长椅。顾名思义，倚靠式长椅不是用来坐的，而是让人们倚靠身体。

它们并非新事物。它们是长达数十年转变的延续，这种转变将公共长椅重新设计成根本不受公众欢迎的东西。这种长椅不是为我们花数小时观察人群而造的，不是为深入交谈而造的，不是为喂鸽子而造的，而且或许最重要的是，它不是为睡觉而造的。

詹姆斯·埃斯特林/《纽约时报》

多年来，设计师、开发商和城市官员引入了带扶手、座位分隔物和弯曲形状的长椅，使得越来越多的无家可归者——他们把这些长椅当作床——感到座位不适。

这些设计变更通常被称为敌对性或防御性建筑，有专门的Instagram账号和Reddit论坛记录它们的兴起。虽然街头无家可归者是主要目标，但大批纽约人也感到恼火。一些人——尤其是年长的纽约人——感到愤怒。

"每个车站都已经有倚靠式长椅了，"79岁的苏豪区大楼主管肖恩·斯威尼说。"我们管那叫'墙'。"

负责监管地铁的大都会运输署已在全市近二十个车站安装了倚靠式长椅。詹姆斯·埃斯特林/《纽约时报》

他补充说："随着年龄增长，你会出现背痛问题。我需要在地铁里有个长椅坐一下，来缓解我的背痛。"

许多公共空间现在也严重缺乏座位。例如，在造价16亿美元的莫伊尼汉火车大厅，乘客们坐在地板上等待美国铁路公司和长岛铁路公司的火车。

布鲁克林湾脊区。詹姆斯·埃斯特林/《纽约时报》

曼哈顿中央公园。詹姆斯·埃斯特林/《纽约时报》

"这明确地指向了无家可归者，"哈佛大学设计研究生院的城市规划与设计教授杰罗尔德·S·凯登说。"这些倚靠栏杆防止任何人在上面躺下或长时间占用。"

在许多方面，纽约市公共长椅的演变反映了社会与公共空间不断变化的关系，谁被视为有资格占用它，以及官员应如何处理无家可归问题的观念转变。

但敌对性建筑不仅仅影响无家可归的纽约人——它影响着每个人。在这个沉迷智能手机、社交技能下降、孤独感上升的时代，作为基本街头设施的长椅所面临的威胁尤为紧迫。

纽约究竟是如何走到这一步的？长椅，这个团结的公共象征，何以变成了一个警告人们远离的信号？

'设置栏杆'

大约1875年，人们坐在中央公园南部的一个湖边。

E. H.T. Anthony Company/档案照片，Getty Images

中央公园于1858年开放了第一部分，是该市早期在公共空间方面最著名的投资之一。19世纪70年代，一种名为"settee"的铸铁长椅为公园大规模生产，让游客可以更舒适地闲坐。它看起来精致，有着外展的细腿。大约60年后，一种新的设计成为城市公园的首选座位：Chrystie-Forsythe长椅，这种长椅更笨重，带有混凝土底座。起初两者都没有扶手。如今在纽约，仍然可以发现这两种类型的长椅，它们隐匿在灌木丛中，俯瞰着城市街道。

到20世纪30年代初，大萧条迫使大量美国人无家可归。在全国范围内，人们建立了"胡佛村"——可供居住的棚户区，包括在已清空的中央公园水库里。

"大萧条时期人们睡在长椅上，"中央公园保护协会的名誉历史学家萨拉·雪松·米勒说。"那时他们睡在公园的各个地方。"

在这种背景下，另一种长椅很快占据了这座城市，由罗伯特·摩西开发，这位臭名昭著的公园专员以其种族主义和阶级主义的方式改造纽约建成环境而闻名。为1939年纽约世界博览会，摩西先生与家具制造商肯尼思·林奇合作，创建了8000个以一个主要特征定义的长椅：环形分隔物。

臭名昭著的公园专员罗伯特·摩西和家具制造商肯尼思·林奇合作，为1939年纽约世界博览会创造了带环形分隔物的长椅。纽约公共图书馆

摩西先生塑造城市建成环境的意图在1974年罗伯特·卡罗的权威传记《权力经纪人》中得到了解释。卡罗先生写到摩西先生如何利用长椅来塑造公众行为："醉汉们晚上仍然不断闯入游乐场；摩西试图首先通过在长椅组之间设置栏杆来阻止他们。"

摩西长椅如今在纽约随处可见，排列在街道中间隔离带、公园和人行道上。有些版本在环形结构内增加了额外的铁制细节，阻止人们把腿伸过去躺下。

对于无遮风挡雨之所的无家可归者来说，分隔物、倚靠式长椅以及普遍的座位稀缺不仅仅是不方便，还可能造成健康和安全问题。

1993年热浪期间，布朗克斯区帕克切斯特公寓的居民坐在户外。米歇尔·V·阿金斯/《纽约时报》

"非常不舒服，而且，我想说，不安全，因为它也伤到了我的背和脖子，"45岁的蒂莫西·埃文斯说，他曾在与毒瘾抗争期间无家可归十多年，去年才搬进了稳定的住所。今年，估计有超过4500人生活在街头和地铁里，这是二十年来的最高点。

埃文斯先生经常睡在中央公园和下东区的长椅上，但他发现睡在长椅下面是最舒服的选择。"有扶手，你没法真正躺下或舒展身体，"他说。

'禁止坐卧'

设计选择，例如扶手，使人们更难在长椅上睡觉，如图中1988年的一个地铁站所示。迪特·普兰/《纽约时报》

在20世纪70年代之前，模糊的反游荡和反流浪法律广泛允许警察凭一时冲动在公共场所逮捕人——通常是有色人种或无家可归者。

亨特学院社会学副教授、《事物的中间：纽约市公共空间中物体的社会生活》一书的作者迈克尔·本尼迪克特松说，这些法律曾被用来规范全国范围内黑人和移民的流动和公共行为。

但在70年代初，最高法院裁定这些法律违宪。"那时你看到更多转向敌对性城市设计和规划，作为实现相同目标的手段，"本尼迪克特松博士说。

敌对性建筑延伸至长椅之外，以阻止人们占用公共空间：窗台上的尖刺、栏杆和花盆，或者更明显的特征，如"禁止坐卧"的标志。

曼哈顿的伸展运动。

詹姆斯·埃斯特林/《纽约时报》

布鲁克林布莱顿海滩的木板步道。

詹姆斯·埃斯特林/《纽约时报》

城市学家威廉·H·怀特观察公共场所的人们，以了解是什么让一些广场充满活力而另一些则死气沉沉。他的主要发现是什么？"人们倾向于在有地方坐的地方坐下，"怀特先生在他具有开创性的1980年电影《小城市空间的社会生活》中叙述道。"这可能不会让你觉得像是个知识炸弹，但这个简单的教训很少有城市曾留意。"

在影片的后面，一个男人在壁架上喝酒，一个人蜷着腿睡在长椅上。"我们来到一个关键人物面前，有些人会称他为'不受欢迎的人'，"怀特先生叙述道。"正是由于害怕他，才在壁架上安装尖刺，把长椅做得太短无法睡觉。一个事实是：这些人大多数是无害的，有时行为相当端正。"

敌对性设计的另一个激增发生在鲁道夫·W·朱利安尼任职期间，这位前共和党市长在1994年至2001年执政。他引入了多项限制无家可归者行为的政策，包括将在公共场所睡觉定为犯罪。"文明社会中街道的存在不是为了让人睡在那里的，"朱利安尼先生在1999年宣布。"卧室是用来睡觉的。"

在私有公共空间，包括一些广场或公园，开发商经常做出阻止人们过久逗留的设计决策。曼哈顿的特朗普大厦被要求在其大厅设置公共座位，以换取增加约20层楼的许可，但长椅上覆盖了花盆。到2015年，这些长椅被拆除，为出售MAGA纪念品的售货亭腾出空间；在遭到强烈反对后，它们于2016年重新安装。

失去的空间

曼哈顿西第四街地铁站今年安装了新的倚靠式长椅。

詹姆斯·埃斯特林/《纽约时报》

近年来，地铁系统中一系列引人注目的暴力袭击事件加剧了纽约人的焦虑。2021年，大都会运输署从23街车站移除了长椅，并在推特上发文称，此举旨在"防止无家可归者在上面睡觉"，随后删除了该帖子。（长椅后来被归还。）

纽约市立大学公共空间研究组主任塞萨·洛表示，这些变化象征着交通枢纽看待方式的转变。"我们正在将这些地方仅仅视为流通和移动的场所，并且我们确保它不再是一个用于社交、聚会、休息的地方，"她说。

大都会运输署通讯主任蒂姆·明顿在一封电子邮件中表示，倚靠式长椅最初是在2010年代末安装的。它们原本是改革地铁车站重大计划的一部分。今年三月在西村西第四街-华盛顿广场站安装的最新设施，是一个新项目的一部分。但是，明顿先生说，"目前没有计划"将这种栏杆推广到其他地点。

在最近一个工作日的下午，在西第四街车站，地铁乘客带着困惑和谨慎接近这些倚靠式长椅。

一位拄着拐杖的女士慢慢走到黑色金属栏杆前，看起来不确定该如何与这个物体互动。她笨拙地将一侧臀部倚在结构的错误一侧，等待着她的火车。

其他人则完全避开这些长椅。一对牵着手的情侣站在一个长椅前几英寸的地方，但没有碰它。一位阅读关于身份盗窃书籍的女士选择靠在附近的墙上。

为美国铁路公司和长岛铁路公司乘客服务的莫伊尼汉火车大厅几乎没有座位。许多人就坐在地板上。

詹姆斯·埃斯特林/《纽约时报》

在莫伊尼汉火车大厅，有一家抹茶店、一家果汁吧和一家高端护肤品店——但主区域几乎无处可坐。在一个需要持票进入的候车室外面，人们经常蹲在地上等待。在最近的一天，一对母女坐在她们巨大的紫色行李箱上。另一个人靠在一根柱子上。一群人不安地站在自动扶梯旁边，扶梯正将乘客运送到下面的站台。

公共空间的力量在于它也可以作为一面镜子，反映世界及其所有的复杂性——揭示其特性、怪癖和问题。"长椅不是问题，它从来都不是问题，"洛女士说。"问题在于人们无家可归。"◾

The public bench is a staple of life in New York City. The pigeon ladies sit and toss out bird seed. The performative reader flaunts a copy of “Crime and Punishment.” Foreign spies covertly hold a meeting. Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks banter in a rom-com.

In a world where we feel increasingly fractured and disconnected from one another, benches can be a symbol of collective experience. But in a city with so many people, and so little space, they are also prime real estate, and a source of tension.

This year, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which oversees the subway, installed leaning benches at a highly trafficked subway station in the West Village, in Manhattan. The leaning bench, as the name suggests, is not for sitting but for people to prop their bodies against.

They are not new. They are a continuation of a decades-long shift of reinventing the public bench into something that doesn’t welcome the public at all. This kind of bench is not made for us to spend hours people watching, it’s not made for deep conversations, it’s not made to feed pigeons and, perhaps above all, it’s not made for sleeping.

Over the years, designers, developers and city officials have introduced benches with arm rests, seat dividers and curved shapes, making the seats uncomfortable for the increasing number of homeless people who have turned them into beds.

Often referred to as hostile or defensive architecture, these design changes have entire Instagram accountsand Reddit forums dedicated to documenting their rise. Though people experiencing street homelessness are the main target, legions of New Yorkers are annoyed. Some — especially older New Yorkers — are angry.

“We already have leaning benches in every station,” said Sean Sweeney, 79, a building supervisor in SoHo. “They’re called ‘walls.’”

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which oversees the subway, has installed leaning benches in nearly two dozen stations around the city.James Estrin/The New York Times

He added: “As you get older, you get back problems. I need a bench to sit on in the subway to ease my back pain.”

Many public spaces also now have a stark lack of seating. In the $1.6 billion Moynihan Train Hall, for example, passengers sit on the floor while waiting for the Amtrak and the Long Island Rail Road.

“It’s unambiguously directed at unhoused individuals,” said Jerold S. Kayden, a professor of urban planning and design at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. “These leaning rails prevent anybody from lying down on them or occupying them for a long period of time.”

In many ways, the evolution of the New York City public bench reflects society’s changing relationship with public space, who is viewed as worthy of occupying it and shifting notions of how officials should deal with homelessness.

But hostile architecture doesn’t just affect homeless New Yorkers — it affects everyone. In an age of smartphone addiction, declining social skills and rising loneliness, the endangerment of the bench, a basic street fixture, is especially pressing.

Just how did New York get to a point where the bench, a public symbol of unity, has turned into a warning to stay away?

‘Putting Up Bars’

People sit by a lake in the southern part of Central Park around 1875.E. H.T. Anthony Company/Archive Photos, via Getty Images

Central Park, which opened its first section in 1858, was one of the city’s most notable early investments in public space. In the 1870s, a cast-iron bench called the settee was mass-produced for the park, allowing visitors to lounge more comfortably. It looked delicate, with its flared, thin legs. Around 60 years later, a new design became the seating option of choice in city parks: the Chrystie-Forsythe bench, which is bulkier with a concrete base. Neither of them had arm rests at first. Tucked between bushes and overlooking city streets, both types can still be foundaround New York today.

By the early 1930s, the Great Depression had forced large numbers of Americans into homelessness. Across the country, people set up “Hoovervilles,” shantytowns to live out of, including in the emptied Central Park reservoir

“People were sleeping on benches during the Depression,” said Sara Cedar Miller, the Central Park Conservancy’s historian emerita. “They were sleeping all over the park then.”

In this climate, another bench would soon take over the city, developed by Robert Moses, the infamous parks commissioner known for his racist and classist approach to transforming New York’s built environment. For the 1939 New York World’s Fair, Mr. Moses worked with Kenneth Lynch, a furniture maker, to create 8,000 benches defined by one main feature: hooped dividers.

Robert Moses, the infamous parks commissioner, and the furniture maker Kenneth Lynch worked together to create benches with hooped dividers for the 1939 New York World’s Fair.The New York Public Library

Mr. Moses’s intentions in molding the city’s built environment were explained in 1974 in Robert Caro’s definitive biography, “The Power Broker.” Mr. Caro wrote of how Mr. Moses used benches to shape public behavior: “Still drunks kept wandering into the playgrounds at night; Moses tried to keep them out first by putting up bars between the bench groupings.”

The Moses bench is ubiquitous across New York today, lining street medians, parksand sidewalks. Some versions have add-on iron detailing within the hoops that blocks people from sticking their legs through to lie down.

For the unsheltered homeless, dividers, leaning benches and the general scarcity of seating are more than just inconvenient, potentially creating health and safety problems.

“It’s very uncomfortable and, I would say, unsafe because it also hurted my back and my neck,” said Timothy Evans, 45, who was homeless for over a decade as he battled addiction before moving into stable housing last year. This year, over 4,500 people were estimatedto be living on the streets and subways, a two-decade high

Mr. Evans often slept on benches in Central Park and on the Lower East Side, but he found that sleeping beneath them was the most pleasant option. “With the arm rests, you can’t really lay or spread out,” he said.

‘No Sitting’

Design choices, such as arm rests, make it harder for people to sleep on benches, as shown at a subway station in 1988.Dith Pran/The New York Times

Before the 1970s, vague anti-loitering and anti-vagrancylaws widely allowed police officers to arrest people in public spaces — often people of color or the homeless — on a whim.

The laws were used to regulate the movements and public behaviors of Black people and immigrants across the country, said Michael Benediktsson, an associate professor of sociology at Hunter College and the author of “In the Midst of Things: The Social Lives of Objects in the Public Spaces of New York City.”

But in the early ’70s, the Supreme Court ruledthat these laws were unconstitutional. “That’s when you see more of a turn to hostile urban design and planning as a means of achieving the same objective,” Dr. Benediktsson said.

Hostile architecture extends beyond benches to deter people from occupying public spaces: spikes on window ledges, rails and planters or even more obvious features, like “no sitting” signs.

The urbanist William H. Whyteobserved people in public to understand what made some plazas lively and others dismal. His main finding? “People tend to sit where there are places to sit,” Mr. Whyte narrates in “The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces,” his seminal 1980 film. “This might not strike you as an intellectual bombshell, but this simple lesson is one that very few cities have ever heeded.”

Later in the film, a man is drinking on a ledge and a person is sleeping on a bench with their legs scrunched up. “We come to a key person, who some people would call ‘the undesirable,’” Mr. Whyte narrates. “It is for fear of him that spikes are put on ledges and benches made too short to sleep on. An actual fact: Most of these people are harmless and sometimes quite well behaved.”

Another uptick in hostile design happened under Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former Republican mayor who was in office from 1994 to 2001. He introduced several policies that restricted the behaviors of homeless people, including criminalizing sleeping in public. “Streets do not exist in civilized societies for the purpose of people sleeping there,” Mr. Giuliani announcedin 1999. “Bedrooms are for sleeping.”

In privately owned public spaces, including some plazas or parks, developers often make design decisions that discourage people from hanging around too long. Trump Tower in Manhattan was required to have public seating in its lobby in exchange for permission to add about 20 floors, but the benches were covered with planters. By 2015, the benches had been removedto make room for kiosks selling MAGA merch; they were reinstalledin 2016 after a backlash.

Lost Space

Lost Space

The West Fourth Street subway station in Manhattan received new leaning benches this year.James Estrin/The New York Times

In recent years, a series of high-profile, violent attacksin the subway system has fueled anxiety among New Yorkers. In 2021, the M.T.A. removed benches from the 23rd Street station and posted on Twitter that the change was meant “to prevent the homeless from sleeping on them,” then deleted the post. (The benches were later returned.)

Setha Low, the director of the Public Space Research Group at the City University of New York, said that these changes symbolize a shift in how transportation hubs are viewed. “We’re thinking about these places as only for circulation and movement, and we’re making sure that it’s no longer a place for socializing, coming together, resting,” she said.

Tim Minton, the communications director for the M.T.A., said in an email that leaning benches were first installed in the late 2010s. They were originally part of a major planto revamp subway stations. The latest additions, placed this March at the West Fourth Street-Washington Square station in the West Village, were part of a new program. But, Mr. Minton said, “there are currently no plans” to bring the rails to other locations.

On a recent weekday afternoon at the West Fourth Street station, subway riders approached the leaning benches with confusion and caution.

One woman, who walked with a cane, slowly came up to the black metal bars, looking unsure of how to interact with the object. She awkwardly propped one hip against the wrong side of the structure, and waited for her train.

Other people avoided the benches altogether. A couple holding hands stood a few inches in front of one, but didn’t touch it. A woman reading a book about identity theft opted to lean on a nearby wall instead.

At Moynihan Train Hall, there is a matcha shop, a juice bar and a high-end skin care store — but almost nowhere to sit in the main area. Outside a ticketed seating room, people often crouch on the floor while they wait. On a recent day, a mother and daughter perched atop their big purple suitcase. Another person rested against a column. A cluster of people stood uncomfortably by an escalator as it carried riders down to the platform.

The power of public space is that it can also function as a mirror, reflecting the world, in all its complexity — revealing its character, quirks and issues. “The bench is not the problem, and it’s never been the problem,” Ms. Low said. “The problem is that people are unhoused.”

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