
Streets with Nooks and Crannies Are Beloved and Endangered - pseudolus
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/urbs/streets-with-nooks-and-crannies-are-beloved-and-endangered/
======
ineedasername
_" Why are nooks and crannies no longer produced? One reason is that their
value is not understood, and in any case no longer taught as part of place-
making."_

Many times they weren't deliberately produced, nor was their deliberate design
taught: they were the result of accretion layers built up over time as new
structures are built next to & on top of existing ones.

They're not dying out through lack of appreciation, they're dying out because
most times it's just plain cheaper to tear down the existing structure and
rebuild.

~~~
mc32
On addition some narrow alleyways are a bit dangerous —they are narrow and in
the event of emergency they can find themselves blocked off (when fire escapes
empty to them, as they usually do).

~~~
lotsofpulp
If a modern developer doesn't address liabilities first, they would quickly be
out of business. Hence, design is restricted to the parameters of what one can
successfully defend if sued.

Fire departments and fire codes are especially difficult to design around in
tight spaces, as they can basically veto any construction that doesn't allow
ample room for fire trucks to get around. The city also doesn't want to get
sued for preventing the building from being built.

See the recent $800M MGM hotels settlement for the Las Vegas massacre. Expect
more cameras, more searches, more cover your ass protocol. Not directly
related to the article, but an example where one's first thought will be "how
do I protect myself from being sued for any possibility in the future".

~~~
Invictus0
Just looked up the settlement: it seems crazy to me that the hotel could be
held liable for the shooting. Is there really an expectation for the hotel to
keep tabs on what its guests are doing?

Edit: I looked into it further: MGM was insured for 751M for the payout and I
suppose they figured an additional 100M to get it out of their hair was worth
it. The existence of a settlement doesn't create a precedent, but I worry
about these incremental movements towards a society where there is some
expectation of invasive tracking.

~~~
lotsofpulp
There is now. Prepare to have your bags checked, and hotel rooms inspected at
least once, if not multiple times per day. It's a ludicrous settlement, and
I'd love to see an explanation from the judge(s) that let the suit(s) proceed
instead of throwing it out.

The whole situation in America at this point is you're liable for anything and
everything that could be connected to you (and definitely if it's on your
property), but it only matters if you have assets you can have taken from you.
So better hope you're big enough to protect yourself as much as possible with
a team of lawyers.

~~~
vkou
> There is now. Prepare to have your bags checked, and hotel rooms inspected
> at least once, if not multiple times per day. It's a ludicrous settlement,
> and I'd love to see an explanation from the judge(s) that let the suit(s)
> proceed instead of throwing it out.

Because someone has to be held accountable for the tragedy, and since we can't
hold politicians, or the gun manufacturers accountable for it, you find the
next person in line.

~~~
WalterBright
> Because someone has to be held accountable for the tragedy, and since we
> can't hold politicians, or the gun manufacturers accountable for it, you
> find the next person in line.

What happened to holding the shooter responsible?

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Gun owners in the USA aren’t required to carry liability insurance, so going
after shooters in civil cases isn’t very productive.

~~~
WalterBright
True, but it isn't just to sue someone else just because they do have
liability insurance.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
There is no pointing in suing someone for hundreds of millions of dollars
unless they have some chance of actually paying that much.

~~~
WalterBright
It's unjust to sue someone who is not at fault just because they have money.

------
CalRobert
It's illegal to build things without enormous parking lots and roads around
them in most instances now. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lvUByM-
fZk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lvUByM-fZk) includes an illustration of
how this even results in the destruction of nice, walkable places when old
buildings are renovated in to apartments.

~~~
mattlondon
Quite a lot of developments in the UK - certainly in London - are proposing
zero parking.

We had a (now shelved) plan near where I live to build 700 2 & 3 bed
apartments in a new development with zero parking spaces in the design. This
strikes me as blindly optimistic that of those 700 apartments (that will
likely have between 2 or 3 people or more per apartment on average, so
somewhere like 1500-2500 people) absolutely none of them will bring car with
them... not even spaces for people who need a car for their disability!

I think their usual rationale of being "environmentally friendly" is really
wake-washing/cover for wanting to fit in more apartments that sell for
£650,000-1,000,000+ each, vs parking spaces which only sell for £25,000 each.

(incidentally is there a word for this willful ignoring of reality, where
people basically just keep on repeating the same false/questionable statements
as if they were genuine facts over and over regardless of any reasonable
evidence to the contrary? E.g. this insistence that something is for
environmental reasons when it is clear to _everyone_ that it is not, or the
rhetoric politicians keep on wheeling out for e.g. Brexit. I guess "lying"is
one word...)

~~~
CalRobert
" think their usual rationale of being "environmentally friendly" is really
wake-washing/cover for wanting to fit in more apartments that sell for
£650,000-1,000,000+ each, vs parking spaces which only sell for £25,000 each."

...and?

The fact that apartments cost more than homes means that the market values
that area more highly for human habitation than for car habitation. Perhaps
you simply can't afford to store your car there.

Also, what are you talking about? Lying? Please support your statement before
leveling this accusation.

~~~
mgleason_3
Sheesh, these “conversations”. Just “eliminating” parking at new developments
does not eliminate the _need_ for parking. People still have to get to work,
school, the grocery store.

We had that happen near us 30 years ago by a developer who used a similar
argument. A golf course was developed into 13,000 apartments with virtually no
parking.

Overnight, the surrounding neighborhood’s streets were changed. Once they had
been calm quiet places with plenty of parking. Now they are loud, crowded with
double-parked cars blocking the street, blocked driveways, yelling and fist-
fights. They’ve tried many thing to “fix” the problem. But 30 years later, the
problems only gotten worse. It still sucks. Of course the neighbors will
oppose it - label it NIMBYism or whatever you like.

But, we do have a problem and it would be great to actually change the status-
qo. So, here’s a proposal:

*New buildings may be constructed without parking but _only_ if both of the following conditions are met:

1\. The occupants are not allowed to own or operate motorized transportation
of any type. This is enforced by the local police and the fines are huge.

2\. 20% of the sales price of the new development is used to build mass
transit.

~~~
techsupporter
I agree with the idea of impact fees being used to fund public transit but
your first suggestion sounds very confrontational for a few reasons:

First, why are only the people who "got there first" allowed to use the public
streets for storing privately owned items?

Second, why not require that people who do have parking are only allowed to
own as many motorized vehicles as can fit in their parking and cannot use the
public right of way to store their private possessions, with huge fines?

It seems like we need more carrot and less stick.

~~~
ItsDeathball
Tokyo manages this problem before it ever becomes a problem: you can't
register your car to a Tokyo address unless you can prove you have a parking
spot. It could be a spot in your front yard (in this case probably the entire
yard) or a rented space in a parking garage. If you can't afford a parking
spot at market rate, then you can't afford a car.

~~~
SECProto
More than that, registration is actually a national requirement for full sized
cars (kei's don't need a registered spot). And the country as a whole
generally does not have street parking. Conjoined, means that
illegal/congested streets from parking isn't an issue

------
carapace
"Building Living Neighborhoods" [https://www.livingneighborhoods.org/ht-0/bln-
exp.htm](https://www.livingneighborhoods.org/ht-0/bln-exp.htm)

Christopher Alexander (of Pattern Language fame)

> Our goal is to help everyone make our neighborhoods places of belonging,
> places of health and well-being, and places where people will want to live
> and work. This has become possible through the use of Generative Codes,
> Christopher Alexander's latest work in the effort to make possible
> conception and construction of living, beautiful communities that have real
> guts -- not the sugary sweetness of pseudo-traditional architecture.

> The tools offered are intended for the use of ordinary people, families,
> communities, developers, planners, architects, designers and builders;
> public officials, local representatives, and neighbors; business owners and
> people who have commercial interests. The processes here are expressed in
> the belief that the common-sense, plain truth about laying out a
> neighborhood, or repairing one, is equally valid for all comers, amateurs
> and professionals. They help people build or rebuild neighborhoods in ways
> that contribute something to their lives. Many of the tools have their
> origin in 30 years of work published in Alexander's The Nature of Order.

This is the site that made me believe that the "unit" of human society is the
_neighborhood_.

('"Atom" is the smallest amount of a phenomenon that evinces all of its
properties.' G. I. Gurdjieff)

~~~
neonate
Do you know where that Gurdjieff quote comes from? I've not heard it before.

~~~
carapace
IIRC "Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson". It's not verbatim.

------
im3w1l
I think it's about power.

If you have one guy calling all the shots, then he will necessarily have a
very abstract and simplified view and use simple patterns like straight lines
and rectangles. There just isn't time for complexity.

If everyone has their own little piece to design and evolve as they see fit,
then they will take into account the local factors and nuances.

~~~
patcon
Agreed. re: power. But perhaps I'm seeing that power relationship differently.
I'm feeling very strong parallels with economist Eleanor Ostrom's view on
governing natural commonses [1].

Basically, she spent 4 decades disproving the "tragedy of the commons" in a
whole set of defined cases, showing that a group of people DON'T selfishly
destroy a commons when looking after it. She codified the requirements for a
group of people properly governing a shared place/resource. Two of the 8 key
requirements were 1) Local autonomy; 2) Appropriate relations with other tiers
of rule-making authority (polycentric governance).

aka, powers must not be pulled too far from the place in which they are
executed. to the extent that we need to seek efficiencies, system should offer
through support from above to operate more efficiently (e.g., offer services
and "kits" to self-manage). DO NOT CENTRALIZE OR CONSOLIDATE POWER.

Of course, the above recommendations can be discarded, but then collective
governance fails, and keeping commonses alive and vibrant requires more and
more central support systems to prevent its failure. Her rules are who you'd
follow if you wanted decentralized and resilient governance structures and
patterns.

[1]: [https://evonomics.com/tragedy-of-the-commons-elinor-
ostrom/](https://evonomics.com/tragedy-of-the-commons-elinor-ostrom/)

~~~
macintux
Per your description “disproving” sounds wrong. Sounds like she proved its
overall correctness but found ways to correct for it.

~~~
patcon
Ah good point. She found the structures in which commonses can thrive, the
permutations of which past generations had stumbled through and "discovered"
(which persisted through the practices surviving time). But then we forget
them and invented other truisms that seem reductive and perhaps wrong :)

------
drewcoo
As often is the case, cars are the elephant in the room. In the alley? We have
rebuilt our urban spaces for cars instead of people. Now we wonder at what
we've lost but have trouble connecting it to the automobile because t's
ubiquitous and most of us can't imagine it otherwise.

~~~
chasing
Yup. It's the main reason many European cities and Manhattan feel so engaging
and alive in comparison to other US cities (just using my experiences).

In walking cities you interact with the city itself -- you can stop and look
at things closely, walk into a small store you've never noticed before, run
into a friend and chat, or pause and just people watch.

In car cities everything's far off and viewed through glass, your only
interaction being which direction you point your car and how fast it moves.
And becoming distracted by something interesting causes expensive and
dangerous accidents. Plus, driving is inherently frustrating and exhausting,
in my experience, especially when compared to walking which is at least a nice
bit of exercise. You just want to be where you're going and WHY IS THERE ALL
OF THIS TRAFFIC?

~~~
greggman2
Manhattan? Manhattan seems like a grid made for cars. Not place full of "nooks
an crannies". I'm not saying it's not nice but it doesn't seem to fit the
article at all. Most European cities are a wonderful mess of winding roads.
Manhattan is mostly a grid. They don't seem comparible.

~~~
reaperducer
Manhattan's grid was laid out in 1811, a hundred years before the automobile.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commissioners%27_Plan_of_1811](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commissioners%27_Plan_of_1811)

Lower Manhattan has plenty of nooks and crannies. My father had a secret
street that he would park on when he needed to visit Battery Park City. It was
a little-known street maybe one or two blocks long that was perfectly legal to
park on but that hardly anyone knew about because it didn't go anywhere. I
went with him a few times, and we were the only car to park there.

Plenty of nooks and crannies can be found, even in grids. There are always
irregularities and sacred cows to be worked around.

Also, Chicago has a lot of nice nooks and crannies. Including an ordinance
that requires that a cattle path be maintained through some of its downtown
skyscrapers, and an old barn at the end of an alley.

[https://www.chicagoarchitecture.org/2009/04/08/the-loops-
mos...](https://www.chicagoarchitecture.org/2009/04/08/the-loops-most-
peculiar-building-2/)

------
jl6
They have been optimized away.

Grids, blocks, straight lines, clear boundaries, maintenance space,
standardized signage, standardized safety and accessibility, standardized
everything... these are all things which reduce TCO.

Non-standard, interesting, niche, characterful, bespoke, artisan, historic...
these all carry hidden costs that manifest in property prices or taxes or
inefficiency.

Everyone admires the aesthetics of the latter type of cities but not so many
are willing to pay the price for them.

------
subpixel
Weird, the masthead photo is the street where I grew up. Now clogged with
people lining up to Instagram, sadly.

Plus nobody lives there anymore, really - they are all the owners’ vacation
homes.

~~~
patcon
Interesting. Thanks! Seems to validate and speak to the point: that these
places are scarce (and so overcrowded) and valuable (as wealth has moved in
and captured it as showpiece with low utility).

------
ilamont
There used to be a neighborhood in Boston called the "West End" which was
actually pretty far east in the city, bumping against the North End, Beacon
Hill, and the Longfellow Bridge which crosses the Charles River.

Most of the buildings were brick tenements built in the 1800s. One of its most
famous native sons was Leonard Nemoy, who left the West End in his late teens
to start his acting career.

The West End had narrow, winding streets, and the city government said this
was a fire hazard because fire apparatus couldn't be driven down certain
streets and alleys. That was true (I saw an old black and white picture of a
fire truck that got stuck making a turn) but there was another motive in
moving to have the tenements cleared and the area flattened: "Urban renewal."
The city wanted other buildings built there, not to mention the elevated
central artery. Over the strenuous objection of residents, almost everyone was
cleared out and the buildings flattened from 1958 to 1960. The elevated
highway, new hospital buildings, government buildings, and commercial
structures went up in its place.

The history of the West End is covered by the West End Museum
([https://thewestendmuseum.org/](https://thewestendmuseum.org/))

Leonard Nimoy was never able to go back home; his parents relocated to West
Roxbury. The central expressway was demolished in the 1990s and the highway
put underground (part of the "The Big Dig", see [https://www.mass.gov/info-
details/the-big-dig-project-backgr...](https://www.mass.gov/info-details/the-
big-dig-project-background#the-problem-)).

------
carapace
I was walking with my mom and her dog up Brotherhood Way in San Francisco and
we tried to take a shortcut through the new development on Summit Way to get
into Park Merced. (There is no shortcut, BTW. There are some abandoned could-
have-been-stairs but, as I say, they are abandoned.)

Anyhow. The houses are each quite nice but the neighborhood itself is terribly
soulless. It's like a locker room for people. The vibe was so creepy it was
like a horror movie. You can check it out on street view:
[https://goo.gl/maps/ZGANULkeqQjKF6Yy6](https://goo.gl/maps/ZGANULkeqQjKF6Yy6)

~~~
unholythree
That's always super annoying. In my mother's old neighborhood there is a
former train yard that was an empty field for decades. It was two or three
blocks wide, about dozen blocks long, and split into thirds by a couple cross
streets. When uppermost third was finally developed, instead of joining the
existing street grid, they surrounded it in a fence and ran a silly meandering
loop inside.

------
rayiner
> Unbroken sheets of glass, prefabricated panels, poured concrete, steel
> girders—these are the basic units of construction, and all resist the kind
> of random puncturing and cobbling that subordinated the work of the
> architect to the changing needs of the community.

Glass curtain walls are progress, civilization, and enlightenment. "Random
puncturing" by contrast, is pernicious just from the sound of it. Romanticism.

~~~
debatem1
Glass curtain walls are many things-- lightweight, easy to prefabricate, etc.
You can make an excellent claim that they belong in the repertoire of any
builder. But to claim they represent progress or civilization is just silly.
The point of any architectural element is to serve the building, that
building's purpose, and the people around it. For the same reason you wouldn't
build a skyscraper out of masonry an outhouse with all glass curtain walls is
an expensive failure, not a triumph of enlightenment.

------
jonstewart
Weird article. Doesn't really cite any trends or data about such nooks and
crannies being at risk.

It features a photo of a newer glass building from Washington, D.C., likely
downtown or in the "Golden Triangle" south of Dupont Circle. There are no
nooks and crannies to be found in that part of town, never were. DC has the
highest proportion, by 3x, of properties with Historic Preservation
designation of any US city. Most of the city was built according to the
L'Enfant plan which specified wide streets and strips of green space in front
of buildings (they look and are maintained as front yards, but these "public
parkings" are owned by DC and not private property, and must be maintained as
green space).

------
newsreview1
Agreed. My city's local "planning commission" has overstepped many old timers
long planned future family-development agreements because big money has come
in wanting to develop large scale housing communities. The communities once
plotted as kid friendly cul-de-sac, have become thoroughfares for big business
by touting "connectivity needs". It's a joke, especially when you see that the
make up of the planning commission is 2/3 land developers and contractors.

~~~
assblaster
Meanwhile, other purists decry cul-de-sacs as a suburban abomination that
inhibit walkability.

~~~
asokoloski
There is a third way. Suburban single-family zones full of cul-de-sacs are
designed to be metaphorically put under glass and never changed. Building
massive towers, on the other hand, is very drastic and has the potential to
destroy the character of a community.

I like the approach advocated by the Strong Towns movement: allow the next
increment of development by right, everywhere. So a neighborhood of mostly
single-family homes should allow accessory dwelling units (mother-in-law
apartments) and conversion to duplexes by right. A neighborhood of duplexes
should allow conversion to triplexes or quadplexes by right. A neighborhood of
those should allow conversion to even denser development like townhomes, and
multiplexes, etc. This allows a town or city to grow gradually and naturally.

The way they put it is, "No community should have to experience extreme
change... but no community should be exempt from change". Wanting to build
massive towers to address housing shortages is not ideal, but it's an
understandable reaction, when it's illegal to address the shortage by having
every neighborhood in the city "thicken up" a bit.

This is how the great cities we love all over the world became great --
through gradual, incremental change and intensification.

~~~
zip1234
I like their idea for height restriction as well--allowing a story higher than
those buildings around it.

~~~
bluGill
Which puts the neighborhood under glass. If you are going to rebuild that
means your payout needs to pay for the current value of the building, tear
down fees, and new construction fees. If the neighborhood is in decline no
problem - land is cheap and the buildings are not being maintained, but there
is no demand to build anything there so nothing gets built. If the area is in
demand land values are high, the people living there maintain their property
(to ensure it keeps the value), and so the costs of building one more floor
are always greater than the costs of keeping the building.

------
asdff
LA used to have a lot of little cut throughs and stairways going up and down
the hillier neighborhoods during the streetcar era. Some of them are still
around of course, but they are pretty secret as their original use case
(getting to the street car stop) has been gone for 60 years.

New builds don't really consider the pedestrian or the neighborhood, and are
generally hostile to the cohesiveness of the area. They are massive and take
up sometimes the whole city block (while only building 5 or so stories
generally), and the only way to bypass them is to go all the way around them
which can take 10 minutes sometimes (vs. like 2 if there was a cut through).

Due to the homeless, most apartments also gate their parking lots so you can't
cut through there either. My current apartment is one of these places and
walkability is severely limited because there are only two exits (despite the
place taking up nearly a block). If the surrounding fencing was removed or at
the very least I had an exit on every cardinal direction and not just to the
east and south west, I'd be able to walk to the subway that is NNW of me 10
minutes faster(calculated by google maps).

------
spanktheuser
“Modernism is the problem!” harrumphed the American Conservative, forgetting
as usual that X was also once very modern. ◔_◔

~~~
deogeo
It's almost as if 'Modernism' refers to a specific (albeit vaguely defined)
style, and not to the property of being new itself.

They're not ranting against semiconductors or antibiotics (both also
relatively modern), are they?

~~~
spanktheuser
Of course not, but these are _not_ relatively modern. They're now part of
traditional fabric of society for current conservatives. I think it's more apt
to look at how conservatives of the time felt about new and paradigm shifting
advances.

They led the charges against the scientific revolution when it threatened to
subvert authority & mechanisms of control, strongly opposing Copernicus,
Bruno, Kepler, Galileo, and Newton. Opposition to Darwin continues to this day
in some quarters. And antipathy towards modern advancements in reproductive
health is still very strong.

In any case, if conservatives come at modernist styles of expression &
ornamentation, they should bring receipts. Or their arguments will smack of
the notorious cries of "moral degeneracy" for which conservative thought is
justly infamous.

In this case, I feel like the author is found wanting and the article unworthy
of HN. There are amazing, actionable critiques of dehumanizing trends in
architecture and urban planning (Jane Jacobs, Christopher Alexander), but this
is not one of them.

~~~
deogeo
> Of course not, but these are _not_ relatively modern.

About as modern as the steel-and-glass/nookless style he criticizes, that
gained prominence after the World Wars [1,2].

Ignoring the guilt-by-association/ad-hominem part of your post, what do you
find so lacking in his critique? I'll grant that it's a long-winded way to say
"it's ugly, sterile, and unpleasant to live in", but I'd say that's a valid
(if subjective) complaint. What sort of critiques did Jane Jacobs and
Christopher Alexander make? I'm very curious.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_antibiotics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_antibiotics)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_architecture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_architecture)

------
patcon
This remind me of this wonderful article on fractals:
[https://aeon.co/ideas/feel-good-fractals-from-ocean-waves-
to...](https://aeon.co/ideas/feel-good-fractals-from-ocean-waves-to-jackson-
pollocks-art)

tl;dr - human instinct guides us to prefer aesthetics with a certain "fractal
dimension" (measure of repeating patterns across scales, ranging from 1.0-2.0)
that mirrors the dimensions found in nature: 1.3-1.5

This sort of symmetry is the signature of living and biodiverse places. We are
hardcoded to prefer it, through deep history.

My read on this is that we're finding solace in manufactured landscapes that
fall within this range, and nooks help create this balance of chaos and order.
The places we build outside this range subtly increase our stress.

The place I've visited where this struck me most, was Juifen, the Taiwanese
mountain town that inspired Spirited Away. Walking through the long market
"tunnel" was like walking along a forest path -- you'd look up and there's be
many layers of canopy and hanging vines and accreted layers of human
intervention. It felt so organic and layers and mentally energizing.
[https://www.tofugu.com/travel/jiufen-spirited-
away/](https://www.tofugu.com/travel/jiufen-spirited-away/)

Disclaimer: failed biochemist and evolutionary geneticist.

------
broabprobe
This reminds me again of why I am obsessed with A Pattern Language[0].
Building close together, setting maximum building height, quiet backs, etc.
This may be a naive opinion but I think if development regulators in cities
followed many of the patterns in A Pattern Language those cities would be much
more enjoyable to spend time in.

[0][http://caper.ws/patterns/](http://caper.ws/patterns/)

------
guscost
Yuri: There are a lot of alcoves in the Astridpark. You use this word,
alcoves?

Ken: Alcoves, yes. Sometimes.

Yuri: There are not many people around in these alcoves at Christmas time. If
I were to murder a man I would murder him here. Are you sure this is the right
word, alcoves?

Ken: Alcoves, yes. It's kind of like nooks and crannies.

Yuri: Nooks and crannies, yes! Perhaps this would be more accurate. Nooks and
crannies rather than alcoves. Yes.

------
ChuckMcM
With the variety of systems in place that tend to reject this sort of "old
world" architecture, I too find it sad.

That said, if anyone knows of an architecture school or architect that is
investigating "modern" community housing that is people focused and not 'car'
focused I would love to look at their work.

------
adrianmonk
I wonder if security might be a reason. Hidden areas are also areas where you
can be mugged, attacked, etc. without witnesses. Maybe on some level people
are intentionally designing things to avoid that.

------
WalterBright
I really like the look of medieval villages. All the erratic roads, leaning
houses, not a straight line anywhere. I sometimes wonder why a subdivision
developer doesn't try to mimic that.

------
pugworthy
This reminds me a lot of Shinjuku Golden Gai.

Also, of "Golden Guy", a Burning Man cluster of micro-camp groups that creates
a Golden Gai type experience each year.

------
dsfyu404ed
Designing and building places people find nice to be in have gone out of style
because building places that suck to be in the name of making them suck to do
the "wrong" things is in fashion.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hostile_architecture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hostile_architecture)

~~~
mc32
This isn’t a one sided problem.

There are: owners, the public and law enforcement.

In SF there were (and are) laws against panhandling, being a nuisance,
harassment, etc., yet owners and or business people had to pressure for
additional laws (known as sit/lie laws) because police were not enforcing
existing laws and some people were abusing and taking liberties. Yes there is
an aspect of social failing in this, but local businesses and residents should
not have to bear the brunt of this.

