Flavio Tosi he had fitted them Damiano Tommasi he takes them apart. The challenge between right and left in Verona also passes through the anti-bivouac benches. The most common example of the so-called “hostile architecture”, i.e. that form of urban furniture design that ends up picking on the poor and clochards by devising solutions that keep them away from parks, sidewalks, buildings, the benches with central armrests had been positioned in different points of the city by the former Northern League mayor 15 years ago to prevent the homeless from sleeping there.
Now the Department of Urban Furnishing, led by Federico Benini, under the junta Tommasi began to remove the dividers to “return the benches to their original appearance, as well as their social purpose”. “We believe – the commissioner explained in a post – that inclusiveness also passes through street furniture, with public areas equipped with structures that, in addition to guaranteeing refreshment, also promote socialisation”.
Tosi, who already at the time had explained how “the benches” were needed “for the elderly, mothers and children, and they are not makeshift beds”, replied on social media: “Well, the beautiful souls of the left remove the anti- bivouac from the benches. Removing the armrests from the benches is not inclusion, it is not humanity. Humanity is giving welcoming structures to the less fortunate, not leaving stragglers on the streets. The city is a concentration of annoying beggars everywhere, filth and rampant decay”.
For the Ronda della Carità of Verona, a voluntary organization that takes care of the least, however “the removal of the anti-bivouac armrests is a gesture that has great significance”.
And it is only the last act of the challenge of the benches in Verona. A few days ago the Tommasi junta, again at the urging of Benini inspired by a Tuscan municipality, had installed five experimental benches “with a hole”, a central recess designed to accommodate wheelchairs for the disabled or strollers for newborns in the middle of the seats.
Not everyone liked the initiative of the inclusive benches, indeed on social networks there were those who had underlined the anomaly of public sessions designed for everyone which, however, due to their very structure, risked becoming the extreme example of anti-policy -bivouac. “It’s just an experiment” Benini defended himself, then announcing the elimination of all the anti-homeless people benches that had resisted for fifteen years.