The case for a bench that faces nothing

The most popular bench on the square faces the side of a delivery van for roughly forty minutes every morning. Nobody has demanded that it be turned. People sit there to finish a call, redistribute shopping bags and wait for someone who has said they are nearly here.

The planning sketch, by contrast, gives each seat an excellent reason to exist. This one faces planting. That one faces the restored frontage. A third is angled towards a sculpture so that a seated visitor may contemplate it. These are pleasant possibilities, but they do not explain the small transactions for which the seats are actually used.

A place to do very little

A shop may lend a chair to a customer. A café may invite a person to occupy one after buying a drink. Public seating has a different value: it does not require the person using it to become anything first. The tired person is not auditioning to be a suitable customer.

This is why moving a bench by a few metres can change who uses it. A seat set apart in a landscaped pocket is excellent for some visits and awkward for someone keeping an eye on a bus stop. The second use is easy to overlook in a drawing.

We should ask where people stop before deciding what they ought to look at. Sometimes the answer is a perfectly serviceable bench which faces nothing in particular. It is not a failure of placemaking. It is a place.