Cities physically redesign public space to prevent morally suspect strangers from gathering

Evidence

And in the United States, even aesthetic considerations must give way before the necessities of moral separation: … The grandeur of a 40-foot-wide staircase descending to the mezzanine level of the Powell street subway station may have to be abandoned, [San Francisco’s] Transit Task Force reported yesterday. … Director Jack Barron said merchants in the area … are increasingly afraid that such a broad stairway might be a gathering place for militants or hippies … — Lyn H. Lofland, World of Strangers_ Order and Action in…, 438

Categorization

• XREF: Concrete instance of how public space is engineered against categories of strangers — connects to Simmel’s blasé attitude and Lofland’s own appearential-vs-spatial distinction. — connects to: High-quality exhibits and a guest-welcome feeling curb vandalism better than barriers do — Freeman Tilden, Interpreting Our Heritage, 352; Demonstration location shifts with state control over public space — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 1187
• ADDENDUM: Supports the trees-as-infrastructure essay’s thread that design choices encode social anxieties — here a stairway designed to prevent gathering.