This makes me very angry.
These are anti-homeless benches designed to look pleasing. It’s called hostile architecture. They’re meant to be uncomfortable to discourage sleeping on.
The people who designed these are assholes. They’re decorators, not designers.
A designer makes things to improve the world for everyone. A decorator takes otherwise unpalatable injustices and disguises them with aesthetics in an attempt to make them inoffensive or even desirable.
Be a designer, not a decorator.
Sorry to post a YT link. But Louis Rossmann, former NYC resident and employer, mentioned that, too. Homeless people used to warm on the ventilation shaft exhausts of the sub. Look, what they did to prevent this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAfncqwI-D8