It's almost a copy-paste of the brochure: https://web.archive.org/web/20140903121925/http://www.factor...
The bench was specifically designed to have those "features", it's not an incidental property.
It is a bench - for sitting on. Not for sleeping, skating, dealing drugs, littering on or spraying graffiti. So why is it bad that it deters those things?
That's presumably the original intent behind it.
But humans are an innovative bunch, so they start using things for all sorts of purposes that they were not originally designed for.
Some of these uses are deemed, whether everyone agrees with that or not, to be bad. Sometimes clearly so, sometimes less.
Should it be bad that a homeless has a relatively comfortable space to sleep ? Maybe if that happens too much, other people can't use the benches any more.
If a bench is unoccupied it makes for a good skaterail. It's already outside and presumably dirty, so where's the harm ? But maybe some people will be deterred to sit if it's always being skated on.
Maybe the graffiti makes the bench look lot's better ? But then that's subjective.
Drug dealing is bad. But I can remember at least one occasion where I was able to lean a heavy thing I was carrying on the bench and prevent it from falling over, by temporarily strapping it to a crease in the bench I was sitting on. Presumably like one of those that are used to hide small drug stashes.
I don't think it's as clear cut, as you make it out to be. And I agree, that it makes sense to forbid, let's say skating and graffiti on benches that people want to sit on.
I just think that even a simple thing as a bench in a public place can be more than just a bench just by virtue of the amount of creative minds that pass by it each day. And dealing with this creativity by just forbidding it, or designing certain use cases out of it makes for dull society.
* Homeless sleeping on public benches
* Surprise drug stashes in public benches
* Skate grease slathered on public benches
* Organized crime organizations tagging public benches as their territory
Then yes, I agree, what a dull society the Camden bench creates.
Whether that's a worthwhile trade-off or not is another question, but it is a trade-off.
The problem, at least for me, is the sleeping bit. I would much rather that people didn't have to sleep out in the streets and if that issue were properly tackled then I doubt many people would be complaining about the benches/spikes etc. But then, we probably wouldn't need anti-sleep benches if the homelessness problem didn't exist.
But as long as that does exist, making public environments hostile to desperate people just looking for somewhere, anywhere, to sleep for the night seems like entirely the wrong answer. It's not solving the problem - it's just moving it to somewhere presumably less pleasant than that bench could have been.
I used to skate myself and I am not against it, but it is definitely damaging.
http://cdn3.spiegel.de/images/image-594952-galleryV9-gbyt-59...
There are parks near my house you can sleep/camp in, and others you can't. There are parks you can skate in, complete with some cool government built and maintained structures, and there are parks you can't skate in.
Zoning differs in every municipality in the world but locally there's zoning codes for neighborhood park, resort/campground park, and formal gardens type park.
Arguing some homeless dude has to be supported to sleep and live in a neighborhood park is exactly like demanding I should be able to build a leather tannery or chromium plating operation in my backyard, because I want to and who cares who it bothers.
"Some homeless dude" would in my case be my own sister if my country were as anti-social as some other countries.
If "we make structures to keep homeless out of sight of the 'normal populace'" applies to your country, then your country is already in the moral wrong for not supporting your homeless by providing them with dignified housing.
There is no excuse you can make for compounding on that that won't make it even more morally wrong.