Buffalo Rising Online

Nov 22nd 2008, 12:00am By West Coast Perspective

Pity the bench. Home to pigeon feeders, transit riders, vagrants and failing athletes, the bench gets a bad rap. But as street furniture, it serves a useful purpose. The Toronto Star’s Christopher Hume recently gave city street benches some overdue love.

Hume writes about Montreal’s benches and how they add life to the city:

For visitors, Montreal is an especially comfortable place to spend time. In addition to all the regular attractions – museums, restaurants, shops, bars, etc. – it feels like one extended park. It's not that the city is so much greener than others; the difference lies in the ease with which it can be inhabited.

What does that mean? Well, to begin with, benches – and lots of them.

Compared with Toronto, where finding a place to sit out on the streets is next to impossible, Montreal positively invites visitors to sit down and watch the passing parade. Benches are everywhere you turn.

He continues...

Simply put, benches allow us to inhabit a city. They help transform a place into a destination. They tell us we're welcome and give us a chance to be spectators as well as participants.

Here in Toronto, it seems benches are regarded with suspicion; perhaps our attitudes are vestiges of a time when this was a city that associated sitting and relaxing with slothfulness and indolence. To sit is to loiter. Even now, there are plenty of signs reminding us that loitering is forbidden. The devil makes work for idle hands, and, in Toronto, idle feet.

Of course, this is nonsense.

And he pokes at his city, which Buffalo can learn many things from…

The street isn't just a way to get from A to B, but a place to be.

And you'd think Toronto, which likes to make a big deal of its commitment to pedestrianism, would latch on to the bench. In the grand scheme of things, benches offer a cheap and easy way to demonstrate its seriousness about getting people to walk.

But the culture of official Toronto is one of fear and loathing. From the bureaucratic point of view, benches are risky business. They attract the homeless, drunks, drug addicts, and worst of all, skateboarders. They are dirty, dangerous and, well, to be avoided.

Too bad.

Benches- they do you and a city good.